New Environmental Performance Index Highlights Sustainability Gains

[EARTH CLIMATE]

Highlights

• European countries continue to lead global environmental performance, with Estonia ranking first in the 2026 EPI.
• More than half of EPI indicators now use AI-enabled tools, including satellite data analysis to track hard-to-measure environmental conditions.
• Few countries are on track for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and progress has slowed on pollution control and natural resource management.
• The United States ranks 27th overall, performing well on environmental health but lagging on biodiversity and climate metrics.

European countries continue to lead the world in environmental performance, according to the 2026 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a biennial assessment produced by researchers at the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and Columbia Climate School’s Center for Integrated Earth System Information (CIESIN). (See the 2024 EPI assessment here.) Yet, the new assessment finds that few countries are on track to meet the global goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and that progress has slowed across a range of pollution control and natural resource management challenges. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2026/07/15/new-environmental-performance-index-highlights-sustainability-gains-and-the-challenges-ahead/

 

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