Latest rankings of environmental and biodiversity health give Switzerland the top ranking, with the US in 33rd spot, and China at 118, out of 178 countries.
The Environmental Performance Index, produced by Yale and Columbia Universities and the World Economic Forum, periodically calculates then aggregates 20 sub indicators into global rankings and trends. Some sub indicators such as access to clean water show improvements, others such as fish stocks show the biggest declines. The indicators are still work in progress, as some ecosystems are hard to measure though technology is offering new options:
“A much wider array of tools for filling key measurement gaps is available now, compared to the 1980s and 1990s, when environmental indicators first entered the international spotlight. New technologies such as remote sensing and institutions in the form of third-party organizations have emerged, and the EPI makes use of these cutting-edge innovations. Fisheries measures, for example, do not come from traditional sources such as international organizations that aggregate national reports. Instead, fisheries data come from an independent academic watchdog group, the Sea Around Us Project, which uses diverse information streams to generate much more complete and accurate portrayals of fleet behavior than any single source. Air quality and forestry measures make use of satellite data to generate metrics that are far more comparable and comprehensive than what emerged from previous modeling efforts and national reports. New satellite data reveal the extent of forest loss and gain over the last decade, from 2000 to 2012”
