Environmental Governance and International Treaties

Participants in the launch of a new project, “Geo-referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development (GRID3),″ at at a side event of the 49th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission held March 7 in New York City. Left to right: Roger Shulungu Runika, director general, Ministry of Planning, National Statistics Institute, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Rachel Snow, chief, UNFPA; Homere Ngoma Ngoma, census coordinator at the Central Bureau of the Census, National Statistics Institute, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Marc Levy, deputy director, CIESIN; Linus Bengtsson, executive director and co-founder, Flowminder;  and Tapiwa Jhamba, technical advisor, UNFPA.

A new project, “Geo-referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development (GRID3),” was launched at a side event of the 49th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission held March 7 in New York City. The side event featured a panel presentation on project objectives and applications by representatives of core GRID3 partners, including Marc Levy, CIESIN deputy director; Linus Bengtsson, executive director and co-founder of Flowminder; Rachel Snow, chief, Population and Development Branch, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); and Tapiwa Jhamba, technical advisor, also of UNFPA. Joining the core partners as a panelist was Homere Ngoma Ngoma, census coordinator at the Central Bureau of the Census, National Statistics Institute, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), who made a presentation on the 2019 DRC census and the potential impact of GRID3 involvement. Also attending were CIESIN senior research staff assistants Olena Borkovska and Kira Topik, and project coordinator Kevin Tschirhart. A lively question-and- answer session followed the presentations.

GRID3 is facilitating the collection, analysis, integration, dissemination, and utilization of high-resolution population, infrastructure, and other reference data in support of national sectoral development priorities, humanitarian efforts, health, and sustainable development goals (SDGs). The project aims to increase developing countries’ capabilities for mapping population distribution as a way of ensuring that everyone, especially the most vulnerable, is counted, refining development priorities and extending and improving the scope and efficacy of countries’ development efforts. The project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Kingdom′s Department for International Development (DFID). Sandra Baptista, senior research associate, is a co-project investigator, with Marc Levy.

The new online mapping service, the National Priority List (NPL) Superfund Footprint Mapper, was featured as part of a Webinar sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Partnerships for Public Environmental Health (PEPH) on May 7. Participants numbered 158 attendees, more than 30 from federal agencies. Senior research associate Meredith Golden showcased the Mapper with assistance from geographic information specialist Tricia Chai-Onn, who also helped develop the service. Golden highlighted data from several projects of the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center operated by CIESIN. These include the U.S. Census Grids and the Global Poverty Mapping Project. The NPL Superfund Footprint Mapper can display population and environmental characteristics for areas surrounding more than 1700 NPL Superfund sites. An archived recording of the Webinar will be available soon on the SRP Web site.

Announced at the World Economic Forum held January 25–29 in Davos, Switzerland, the 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) produced by CIESIN and Yale University’s Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP), in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy, identifies Switzerland as first in addressing pollution control and natural resource management challenges. Iraq is ranked last. The EPI has been produced every two years since 2006. The 2012 EPI ranks 132 countries, using 22 indicators in ten major policy categories including air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity, and forest management.

For the first time a complementary index showing country improvement from 2000 to 2010, the Pilot Trend Environmental Performance Index (Trend EPI), was released. Latvia was ranked number one in the Trend EPI, with Russia in last place. The U.S., which is 49^th in the EPI, was just 77^th in the Trend EPI, implying few recent gains in addressing environmental issues.

Data sets making up the EPI were contributed from the International Energy Agency, remote sensing research groups at Battelle and University of Maryland, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and other entities. Lack of data in certain areas—in particular, waste management, toxic exposures, agricultural sustainability and water resources—continue to limit the ability of the EPI to contribute towards the understanding necessary to develop policies for safeguarding the environment.

The largest, most comprehensive global information service on environmental law, ECOLEX, combines the environmental law information holdings of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) into an accessible and easy-to-use online service. CIESIN is supporting ECOLEX through a search service that enables users to easily search for and obtain Conference of Party (COP) decisions for ten major treaties. The tool was initially developed as part of the Environmental Treaty and Resource Indicators (ENTRI) service of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). The COP decision search tool indexes thousands of decision documents using a Google Search Appliance and has recently been updated with new COP decisions as of April 2, 2010.

The 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which ranks 163 countries on environmental performance, has been released at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 in Davos, Switzerland. The Index, produced every two years since 2006 by researchers at CIESIN and Yale University’s Center for Environmental Law and Policy, is based on twenty-five indicators grouped within ten core policy categories—including environmental health, air quality, water resource management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and climate change—in the context of two objectives: environmental health and ecosystem vitality. The EPI’s proximity-to-target approach, in which each country’s performance is measured against clearly defined targets, enables comparisons among countries with very different characteristics.

Although some rankings have changed dramatically—the U.S. dropped from 39^th to 61^st place since the 2008 index, for example—so too have the methodologies and data. “A better focus is the comprehensive country profiles, which present a measurement across the different environmental indicators,” says CIESIN senior research associate Alex de Sherbinin, a co-author on the report. These profiles, designed by CIESIN research associate Valentina Mara in conjunction with the Yale team, show a country’s scores for the indicators, policy categories, and objectives. Drilling down here, de Sherbinin points out, can help decision makers identify the needed focus of attention for a particular country. Geographic information specialist Malanding Jaiteh, CIESIN deputy director and EPI project leader Marc Levy, and senior research staff assistant Paola Kim were also part of the CIESIN team.

Analysis shows that income is a major factor in high environmental performance, but that policy choices may trump economic capacities. For example, the differences between neighboring countries Chile (ranked 16^th) and Argentina (70^th), or between Malaysia (55^th) and Thailand (68^th), have a lot to do with different approaches to environmental policy and governance. The biggest changes this year were seen in the scores for air pollution and effects on ecosystems, and a new indicator, water scarcity, was added. The indicators were drawn from international organizations such as the World Bank, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Some of the data sets are drawn from government reporting that is not subject to external validation, and incomplete data have resulted in incomplete representation of countries. The report calls for greater investment by the world community in environmental monitoring, and for data sharing and transparency on the part of national governments.

Robert Chen countersigns the agreement with IUCN on behalf of CIESIN. Palisades, New York.

CIESIN and the Environmental Law Centre of IUCN (The International Union for Conservation of Nature) have signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that formalizes a long-standing collaboration between the Environmental Treaty and Resource Indicator (ENTRI) service of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) and the ECOLEX service developed by IUCN, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. (FAO), and the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP). Under the MOA, IUCN will provide access to its regularly updated treaty status database, and CIESIN will provide ECOLEX with advanced data query functions and ENTRI’s Conference of Party decision search tool (ENTRI COP). The MOA also lays the groundwork for further cooperation in developing new services for the international legal and research communities concerned with environmental treaties.