Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Green Ratings

A recently concluded research study aimed to rank 141 nations of the world according to the most greenest and most livable places. The study was carried out by an environmental economist form the University of California, in Los Angeles, by the name of Mathew E Kahn PhD. He and his team analyzed data for 141 nation of the world from two main data sources. These were

1. United Nations 2006 Human Development Index
2. 2005 environmental Sustainability Index

Their analysis looked into social factors such as education and income and into environmental measures.

The following chart shows a summary of some of the categories and how our dear old SL fared.












































Category Rank of Sri Lanka #1 #141
Air Quality - Rates concentration of several pollutants in urban areas 102 Moldova Guatemala
Water Quality - Rates pollutant levels as well as other factors that affect water purity 90 Norway Morocco
Energy Efficiency - Rates conservation efforts and use of renewables such as hydrocarbon 36 D. R. Congo Trinidad & Tobago
Green House Gasses - Rates carbon emission per capita and GDP 37 Chad Turkmenistan
Environmental Health - Rates childhood mortality, diseases and deaths from intestinal infections 36 Austria Turkmenistan
Overall - Rates the greenest, most livable countries based on social and environmental factors 66 Finland Ethiopia


The study also revealed 5 key lessons tha can lead to improvements.

1 You can always get greener
2 Don’t stop thinking about the future
3 Save forests and trees
4 Manage progress for the benefit of all
5 Turn things around while there is still time

A ranking of 66 out of 141 is actually better than what I would’ve thought we’d get. We are already half way there and with a little more effort we can certainly improve on things. Let’s just hope that things don’t go the other way :D

Source: Reader’s Digest

PS - Oops... guess my table experiment didn't go off that well. Will fix it when i get some time :(

5 comments:

Nadiyya said...

Heyyyy norway have the best waterr!! Well i knew that already... Yummy

pissu perera said...

i just climbed a huge mountain of garbage today. i wonder if we'll still be number 66 if the compilers of this list saw that dump...

Anonymous said...

Lol at Pissu's comment
It really is funny :)

I too was thinking how come we are 66? Did someone bribe someone?

Lady divine said...

I couldn't agree more with Pissu..
nice way of putting it too...

Man, I wonder how long more we'll survive!!

Azrael said...

Nadiyya - Well good for you :D

Pissu - Errmmm... I hope that was a one off thing :P

Mia and LD - Well if you just consider Colombo, we'll fail of course, but things are still good out of Colombo.