- Environmental Sustainability Index summarizes the overall environmental sustainability of Indian states, with sub-indices covering policy and civil society contributions, resource stock, and environmental outcomes.
- ESI Website: www.greenindiastandards.com is an interactive site where the rankings of each state and detailed performance of states across multiple environmental aspects can be viewed.
- Powerful tool that can assist government and industrial bodies in understanding priorities and performance.
- Manipur is best performing state; Punjab and Gujarat rank low in 2008
The Centre for Development Finance (CDF) at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR), has developed a comprehensive environmental sustainability index (ESI) for Indian states. The ESI tracks the environment performance of 28 states and projects their ability to protect the environment in future. The rankings are relative and measured on a scale of 0 to 100, allowing states to see how well they are doing in comparison to other states.
An interactive website www.greenindiastandards.com was also formally launched, where the rankings of each state and year-wise change in ranking can be viewed. It enables the browser to explore a detailed environmental profile of each state plus its performance across each indicator and policy categories and make interstate comparisons for any number of states along any number of chosen indicators and policy categories and per-capita income.
The Environmental Sustainability Index Report for Year 2008 was released by Dr. Jessica Wallack, Director, CDF, in the presence of eminent personalities including Dr. Ramanathan, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego. This was followed by a panel discussion on "Green policies and States’ Perspective on Sustainability" to discuss the states' perspective and importance of information in environment policy making.
The Award for 'Green States' was also give to 5 select states who had performed well on various aspects of Environmental Sustainability, namely: Himachal Pradesh (for best government’s initiative), Manipur (for best peoples’ initiative), Chhattisgarh (for least polluted water), Sikkim (for best conservation of natural resources) and Meghalaya (for best air quality). Manipur was declared the best performing state in the 2008, followed by Sikkim and Tripura. The lowest ranked states are Punjab, Gujarat and Haryana.
Speaking on the occasion Dr. Jessica Wallack, Director, CDF, said, “IFMR-CDF’s ESI helps to aggregate and summarize disparate data to provide a quick comparison of states’ resources, environmental policies, and outcomes. We hope that the report and the website will attract attention to the increasing need to manage the natural resource stock judiciously and lessen the stress on the environment and consequent human health. The ESI is also a powerful policy tool for identifying state-specific priorities and challenges.“
About CDF:
CDF is a non-profit policy research and consulting organization at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) business school in Chennai. CDF was formally established in February 2006 with a mission to identify creative, sustainable models for financing development. It focuses on providing quality research, clear strategies, and information and decision-making tools to heighten the effectiveness of public and private initiatives to provide infrastructure, a key ingredient in sustainable, equitable, inclusive growth. CDF’s work is divided into four main program areas: Rural Infrastructure and Governance, Urban Infrastructure and Governance, Environmentally Sustainable Finance, Strategy Advisory Group, and Economic Demography.
