2008 Environmental Performance Index: Malaysia 26th in the world

Malaysia is ranked at the 26th position globally based on environmental performance according to the 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI). The report was published by a team of experts from Yale University and Columbia University in early 2008.

The scoring was developed under six established policy categories; Environmental Health, Air Pollution, Water Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural Resources, and Climate Change. Under each category, various performance indicators were applied which contributed to the overall score. The EPI identifies broadly-accepted targets for environmental performance and measures how close each country comes to these goals. In total, there were 25 performance indicators used for the ranking of 149 countries.

Construction of the EPI (Courtesy of http://epi.yale.edu)
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The first EPI report was first introduced in 2006 with the Pilot 2006 EPI. The EPI was preceded by the 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). The EPI differs from the ESI because it stresses a comparison of current conditions with targets as opposed to long term sustainability. Underdeveloped African countries may be relatively unpolluted (and therefore rank high on long-term sustainability), but may not be providing drinking water and sanitation services for their current population. Other countries, such as the UK and Germany, may be handling current environmental challenges well, but face difficult long-term sustainability problems.

The EPI score ranged from 0 to 100. Malaysia's ranking has dropped from the 9th position in the 2006 EPI to the 26th in the current report. In term of score however, Malaysia has been able to accumulate 84.0 in score in 2008, alongside Denmark, compared to 83.3 in 2006. There were an additional five indicators included in the 2008 analysis.

According to the 2008 EPI, Switzerland dominates once more in term of environmental performance with the score of 95.5. Having scoring above 80, Malaysia's effort in managing its environment can be considered suffice. In respect of Asian countries, Malaysia sits on the 2nd position, only to fall behind Japan. Among Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member countries, Malaysia lies on 4th trailing New Zealand, Canada and Japan.

Of all six categories used to benchmark Malaysia environmental performance, only two categories which Malaysia fails to achieve more than 80 individual score. Malaysia scores exceptionally well in Air Pollution and Environmental Health with the scores of 97.9 and 96.7, respectively. The nation also manages to perform sufficiently in Water Resources and Productive Natural Resources, 84.4 and 83.6 respectively. However the good form was not reflected in the Biodiversity and Habitat, and Climate Change categories scoring only of 68.3 and 61.9, respectively.

Although the report does not suggest causation, the low score in Biodiversity and Habitat category would points out the impacts of deforestation due to rapid logging and plantation activities. As for the Climate Change category, the CO2 emission in Malaysia although is not at a critical state but has developed at an alarming rate. With the nation's goal in heading towards sustainable environment, policy makers could use the under-performing indicators revealed in the EPI report as areas to look further into.

References

Esty, D.C., Levy, M.A., Srebotnjak, T., de Sherbinin, A. , Kim, C.H., and Mara, V. (2008). 2008 Environmental Performance Index. Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. Retrieved from http://www.yale.edu/epi/files/2008EPI_Text.pdf

Esty, D.C., Levy, M.A., Srebotnjak, T., de Sherbinin, A. , Kim, C.H., and Anderson, B. (2006). Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index. Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. Retrieved from http://www.yale.edu/epi/2006EPI_MainReport.pdf