Environment Summary
A healthy environment is sometimes dismissed as a luxury for the rich. But people cannot live without a well-functioning environment. And poor nations have weaker infrastructures and fewer social services than rich countries, making the results of, for example, climate change—like floods, droughts, and the spread of infectious diseases—all the more damaging.
The environment component looks at what rich countries are doing to reduce their disproportionate exploitation of the global commons. Are they reining in greenhouse gas emissions? How complicit are they in environmental destruction in developing countries, for example by importing commodities such as tropical timber? Do they subsidize fishing fleets that deplete fisheries off the coasts of such countries as Senegal and India?
Britain tops the environment standings. It cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 7% during 1994–2004, the last ten years for which data are available, thanks to steady increases in gasoline taxes and strong support for wind and other renewable energy sources. Most rich countries’ emissions rose. Spain finishes low as a heavy subsidizer of its fishing industry while Japan is hurt by its high tropical timber imports. Japan is also the only holdout among CDI countries, aside from landlocked Switzerland, against the U.N. Fisheries Agreement, which is meant to limit overfishing in international waters. The U.S. ratified that agreement but not the Kyoto Protocol, the most serious international effort yet to deal with climate change. That gap, along with high greenhouse gas emissions and low gas taxes, puts the U.S. last. Two notches up, Australia cuts a similar profile, with the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in the group.
For more, go Inside the Index.