Sri Lanka still among the worst in the world to protect the environment?

By Huzefa Aliasger

Colombo, Feb. 6 (Daily Mirror) - Sri Lanka ranked 134 out of 180 countries in the latest Environmental Protection Index (EPI) report compiled by Yale and Colombia universities with a score of 38.8 out of 100 on their national efforts to protect environmental health.

This shows that despite the effort of the government’s ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ initiatives, the country has a long way to go to get a higher global ranking in its cleanliness and its initiatives to protect the environment.

However, although globally Sri Lanka is ranked low, the country ranked second in South Asia according to the research conducted by Yale and Columbia University.

The data which has been conducted in 2024 which is the latest to be released by the universities said that “Countries’ wealth is a strong predictor of overall EPI scores and especially of Environmental Health scores. Wealth is positively correlated with countries’ scores on Ecosystem Vitality and Climate Change.”

The report showed that Vietnam ranked last at 180 with the least EPI score of 24.6 in the world whereas Estonia ranked first with an EPI score of 75.7. Neighbouring countries in South Asia like India and Pakistan ranked 176 and 179 in the world with scores of 27.6 and 25.5 respectively.

Southern Asia had the lowest regional EPI score (32.1), with several of the world’s worst performers. However, Bhutan was the highest-scoring country in Southern Asia, performing particularly well on Ecosystem Vitality. Bhutan’s protected areas cover more than half of its land and is the world’s top performer on the Forests issue category. On Environmental Health, however, Maldives outperformed all other countries in the region by at least 17 points. While Maldives has relatively good air quality, the rest of Southern Asia is the global hotspot of air pollution.

Explaining Sri Lanka’s ranking, the report said that despite its low score, Sri Lanka had defied global trend in air pollution and had shown no deterioration in ambient air quality, despite steady and sharp increases in vehicular population, which increased by 40 percent in four years without a corresponding increase in air pollution.