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India ranks low on Yale EPI index; but improvement in water access on

India Water Review : January 29, 2014

New Delhi : India has been put at a lowly 124th place in terms of access to water and sanitation in a ranking of 178 countries on the 2014 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) released by US-based Yale University last week.

India scored a dismal 26.28 out of 100 in terms of access to drinking water, getting ranked at 103rd place out of 178 countries being considered. In terms of access to sanitation, India fared even worse, scoring just 6.2 and getting ranked at 144th place.

The EPI tracked the performance of 178 countries on environmental issues ranging from air and water quality, to fisheries and forests, to human health, to climate change, painting a picture of disappointment side-by-side with hope.

The water and sanitation indicator in the EPI tracked percentage of population with access to improved drinking water sources and improved sanitation, including pit latrines and toilets.

On the issue of water resources, which includes wastewater treatment, India got a score of 10.49, putting it at 87th place out of all the countries considered. The water resources indicator tracked how well countries treated wastewater from households and industrial sources before releasing it back into the environment.

However, on a positive note, the rankings showed that there was an upward trend in terms of improvement in terms of access to water and sanitation in India, indicating that the efforts of the Central and state governments to expand coverage of water access and sanitation are bearing some fruit.
In overall water and sanitation indicator, India saw a 55 per cent improvement during 1990-2011. In access to water alone, India saw a 53.26 per cent improvement during the decade while it did even better in sanitation, pulling in an impressive 69 per cent improvement.

The EPI study also noted that while the world has made great strides in increasing access to improved drinking water sources, only 55 per cent of the global population has access to piped drinking water. This has both social and public health implications, as piped drinking water supplies on premises are associated with the best health outcomes, and minimize the disproportionate burden placed on women and children to retrieve water.

Additionally, improving global access to sanitation has been slow. UNICEF estimates that approximately 2.5 billion people worldwide still lack access to adequate sanitation, and 15 per cent of the world’s population is forced to defecate in the open. These one billion people are primarily (71 per cent) rural.

The 2014 Environmental Performance Index found that the world lagged on some environmental issues, while demonstrating progress in others. The EPI report said a 'global scorecard' provided first-time insight as to collective policy impacts on the major environmental issues of our time.

Overall, improvements have been made in many of the categories of the environmental health objective, including access to drinking water, child mortality, and access to sanitation, though air quality has declined.

Declines and overall low scores are found in air quality, fisheries, and wastewater treatment. While in most areas, trends suggest improvement, some primary issues like air quality and fisheries show distressing decline over the last decade.

Overall too, India has been placed at 155th place out of 178 countries in terms of environmental protection, scoring just 31.23 out of possible 100. India's air quality has been judged to be among the worst in the world, keeping pace with China in terms of the proportion of the population exposed to average air pollution levels exceeding World Health Organisation (WHO) thresholds.
The EPI said in India alone, premature deaths from outdoor air pollution increased from 100,000 to 600,000 between 2000 and 2010.

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