The 2024 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) tracks progress towards the SDGs, the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
Key points
- The 2024 index ranks180 countries on their progress in mitigating climate change, safeguarding ecosystems, and promoting environmental health, based on 58 indicators across 11 issue categories.
- Estonia leads this year’s rankings, largely due to replacing oil shale power plants with cleaner energy sources.
- The rankings reveal that emissions in the world’s largest economies are falling too slowly or even rising. The US, for example, is ranked 34th. The Russian Federation is in 84th place. China and India are ranked 154th and 176th, respectively.
- Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy at Yale University and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University developed the Index with support from the McCall MacBain Foundation.
