India stands at 49 among 60 countries in Global Green Economy Index 2014!

The 4^th edition of the Global Green Economy Index (GGEI) is just published.  It is claimed to be an in-depth look at how 60 countries perform in the global green economy, as well as how expert practitioners rank this performance. The publishers inform that, “like many indices, the GGEI is a communications tool, signaling to policy makers, international organizations, the private sector and citizens which countries are successfully orienting their economies toward greener growth pathways and which ones are not. Importantly, the GGEI also generates perception values, offering unique insights into how communications and information exchange can be leveraged to further advance green economic growth”.  While Sweden tops the performance list, India ranks at 49 among the 60 countries that were studied.

The highlights from the 2014 Global Green Economy Index results include:

THE WINNERS

Germany (perception) and Sweden (performance) top the 2014 GGEI, confirming a trend observed in prior editions of strong results by Germany and the Nordic states. Besides performing well on both the economic and environmental areas of the GGEI, these nations display consistent green leadership and receive global recognition for it;

Covered for the first time in this edition, Costa Rica performs extremely well, ranking third on the GGEI performance measure behind Sweden and Norway and receiving strong recognition on the perception survey, an impressive result for such a small country;

Like in 2012, Copenhagen is the top green city as ranked by our survey of global experts, reinforcing the continued strength of the Danish green brand. Tracked for the first time this year, Vancouver and Singapore also rank in the top 10 of green cities.

EMERGING TRENDS

Many of the fastest growing economies in the world rank poorly on the GGEI performance measure, highlighting an urgent need to reorient their economies to greener growth pathways. Regionally, these countries are mostly in Africa (Ghana), the Gulf (Qatar, United Arab Emirates), and Asia (Cambodia, China, Thailand, Vietnam);

There are concerning results related to more developed countries as well – notably Australia, Japan, the Netherlands and the United States – where perceptions of their green economic performance dramatically exceed their actual performance on the GGEI. These countries appear to receive more credit than they deserve, an information gap that requires further exploration;

Despite its leadership founding the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), South Korea continues not to register as a green country brand on our survey and performs poorly, ranked 39th out of 60 on this year’s GGEI. Despite better perception results, Japan also performs poorly on the 2014 GGEI, ranked 44th out of 60;

While the United Kingdom performs adequately in most areas of the GGEI, it doesn’t excel on any one topic, possibly due to inconsistent political rhetoric and policy related to green economy there. While gradually improving in each successive GGEI edition, the UK still lags behind its northern European and Nordic competitors;

Five European nations - Austria, Iceland, Ireland, Portugal and Spain – reveal performance scores that exceed their perception ones significantly – signaling an urgent need for better strategic communications and information exchange of their green merits and associated investment opportunities;

The GGEI results reveal a similar observation for a variety of non-European states - including Ethiopia, Mauritius, Rwanda in Africa and Colombia, Chile and Peru in Latin America – again suggesting a need for these states to better position their green economies on the international stage.

I am yet to make an analysis of this report.  However, thought to share with you these briefs as soon as the report was released. The report can be accessed at http://dualcitizeninc.com/GGEI-Report2014.pdf

Hope you will find it useful.

Thanks and regards,

Ranjan Panda