Environmental Enforcement Indicators

Report Title: Pilot Environmental Sustainability Index (PESI)
Source: Presented at Annual Meeting 2000, Davos, Switzerland
Author: An Initiative of the Global Leaders for Tomorrow Environment Task Force, World Economic Forum, In collaboration with the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, Yale University; and Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Columbia University
Web Link: http://www.yale.edu/envirocenter/research/esi.html
Date of report review: September 6, 2001

Report notes:

• The Pilot Environmental Sustainability Index is a first to attempt to measure the ability of economies to achieve environmental sustainability. The index is a compilation and analysis of data sets from worldwide sources. 64 variables > 21 factors > 5 components.

• The social and institutional capacity component assesses “if an economy is environmentally sustainable to the extent that [the economy] has in place political institutions and underlying social patterns of skills, attitudes and networks that foster effective responses to environmental challenges.” Within this component, 6 factors are represented by 17 variables. For example, within the science and technical capacity factor are variables like expenditure for R&D as a percentage of GNP and the number of R&D technicians per million population. Also, within the environmental regulation and management factor are variables like transparency and stability of environmental regulations. Another factor is the tracking environmental conditions that counts the percentage of ESI variables in publicly available data sets.

• Global stewardship measures whether “an economy is environmentally sustainable if it cooperates with other countries to manage common environmental problems, and if the [countries’] economy reduces negative environmental impacts on other countries to levels that cause no serious harm.” 11 variables are included in 2 factors. For example, the contribution to international cooperation factor includes variables like percentage of CITES reporting requirements met and Levels of ratification under the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer.

• The PESI found no usable data for the following variables. (just a sample of unusable data)

  1. Proportion of government budget devoted to environmental protection
  2. Extent of use of environmental impact assessment process
  3. Compliance with domestic environmental regulations
  4. Compliance with international environmental agreements

• Five of the seven highest correlations between factors and the total ESI are with social and institutional factors. The PESI found this outcome to suggest that capacity is fundamentally an important driver behind sustainability (or that the PESI did not do an effective job in distinguishing these elements). This question will be addressed in the review process.

Suggested initiatives:

• We should discuss partnership opportunities – particularly for the factors and variables analyzed under the social and institutional capacity and global stewardship components.
• Data sources from the PESI that may aid in our search.

  1. UNESCO, Statistical Yearbook 1998,
  2. World Economic Forum, 1999 Competitiveness Survey
  3. CIESIN’s data set