India fails the green test and ranks worst in the Environmental Performance Index.

The newly issued Environment Performance Index-2022, an international rating system that analyses nations' environmental health and sustainability, has rated India last out of 180 countries ranked.

With a score of 18.9, India ranks 180th, below Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Myanmar - the lowest five nations in terms of environmental health performance.

According to EPI, India also ranks poorly in terms of rule of law, corruption control, and government performance.

With a score of 27.6, India was ranked 168th in EPI-2020. Denmark was ranked top in environmental health and sustainability in the EPI-2020.

The World Economic Forum launched the EPI, a biannual index, in 2002 as the Environmental Sustainability Index in partnership with the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network.

"EPI rates 180 nations on climate change performance, environmental health, and ecosystem vitality using 40 performance indicators across 11 issue areas." According to the EPI study, "these indicators give a barometer on a national scale of how near nations are to specified environmental policy objectives." Overall EPI rankings show which nations are doing the greatest job of tackling environmental concerns, according to the report.

According to the paper, "excellent policy results are connected with wealth (GDP per capita)," which means that economic success allows governments to invest in policies and programmes that lead to desired outcomes. "This trend is especially true for issue categories under the umbrella of environmental health, as constructing the necessary infrastructure to provide clean drinking water and sanitation, reduce ambient air pollution, control hazardous waste, and respond to public health crises yields large returns for human well-being," according to the report.

The pursuit of economic prosperity — manifested in industrialisation and urbanisation — often means more pollution and other strains on ecosystem vitality, especially in the developing world, where air and water emissions remain significant, it says. The report says that top-performing countries have paid attention to all areas of sustainability, while their lagging peers tend to have uneven performance.
According to the research, "a number of significant nations in the Global South, notably India and Nigeria, score towards the bottom of the rankings." Their poor EPI scores suggest a need for increased attention to the whole range of sustainability needs, with a high emphasis placed on crucial concerns such as air and water quality, biodiversity, and climate change. Other laggards, such as Nepal and Afghanistan, confront bigger issues such as civil turmoil, and their low rankings are almost entirely attributable to poor governance."