‘Unscientific’: India rejects environment survey's 'Worst Sustainable Country' rating

New Delhi, Jun 08: The Union environment ministry on Wednesday rejected the Environmental Performance Index 2022, which ranked India at the bottom of a list of 180 countries, saying some of the indicators it used are "extrapolated and based on surmises and unscientific methods".

"The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) 2022 released recently has many indicators based on unfounded assumptions. Some of these indicators used for assessing performance are extrapolated and based on surmises and unscientific methods," the ministry said in a statement.

"A new indicator in the climate policy objective is 'projected GHG emissions levels in 2050'. This is computed based on the average rate of change in emission of the last 10 years instead of modelling that takes into account a longer time period, extent of renewable energy capacity and use, additional carbon sinks, energy efficiency etc. of respective countries," the ministry said.

The ministry said the weight of the indicators in which India performed well has been reduced and the reasons for such change have not been explained in the report.

"The principle of equity is given very low weightage in the form of indicators like GHG emission per capita and GHG Emission intensity trend. The CBDR-RC principle is also barely reflected in the composition of the index," it said.