[Vision2020] Top Ten Green Countries

[Nicholas Gier]

How green is your native land? The 4th edition of the Global Green Economy
Index <http://dualcitizeninc.com/GGEI-Report2014.pdf>, produced by private
U.S.-based consultancy Dual Citizen LLC <http://dualcitizeninc.com/>, has
just been released, and you can look it up. The index provides an in-depth
look at how 60 countries and 70 cities are doing in developing more
environmentally
friendly economies <http://ecowatch.com/business/sustainable-business/>, in
actual performance and in how experts perceive their performance.

“We first published the Global Green Economy Index in 2010 guided by a
belief that the environment, climate change
<http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/> and green, low-carbon growth
would rapidly become defining issues for national policy makers and the
global reputation of countries,” says the report’s introduction. “As we
went to press, 2,646 events in nearly 162 countries mobilized pressure on over
100 world leaders gathered
<http://ecowatch.com/2014/09/24/un-climate-summit-ban-ki-moon/> in New York
at the United Nations to take substantive and binding action on climate
change. The link between these issues and the reputation of leaders and
nation states is more vivid today than ever before.”

The 60 countries covered are a dramatic increase from the 27 included in
the last report in 2012. It assessed nations on every continent and found
that the Scandinavian countries, along with Germany, were clear leaders.
Sweden and Norway headed up the list of actual performance, with Costa Rica
ranking third, inside the top 15 for the first time, and Germany
<http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/14/germany-record-setting-renewables/> and
Denmark
<http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/01/samso-renewable-energy-island-sustainable-communities/>
rounding out the top five. Poland, Senegal, Qatar, Vietnam and Mongolia
bring up the rear in slots 56-60, with China just above them at 55. The
U.S. came in close to the middle, ranked at 28.

Perception was very different. The study found that some countries got less
credit than their green economies merited, while other countries got too
much credit for making environmentally friendly moves. Austria, Iceland,
Ireland, Portugal and Spain were among the European countries that the
index found needed “improved green country branding,” along with the
African nations of Ethiopia, Mauritius, Rwanda and Zambia, the latter four
all covered in the index for the first time.

Other countries, some of the world’s most developed nations, including the
U.S., Japan, the Netherlands and Australia, get more credit than their
lagging performance deserves. The U.S. came in sixth in perception, while
Japan, ranked 44th in performance, came in seventh in perception.
[image: top10countries] <http://dualcitizeninc.com/GGEI-Report2014.pdf>Top
10 greenest countries based on performance. Chart credit: Dual Citizen LLC

On the liability side, the index revealed that some of the world’s fastest
growing economies aren’t growing green economies. In addition to China
<http://ecowatch.com/2014/10/09/china-greenhouse-gas-emissions/>, rapidly
growing countries like Ghana, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Cambodia,
Thailand and Vietnam are also doing poorly.

Four of the ten greenest cities were, unsurprisingly, in Scandinavia, with
Copenhagen in first place, Stockholm in third, Helsinki ninth and Oslo
tenth. The top ten was rounded out by Amsterdam (2), Vancouver (4), London
(5), Berlin (6), New York (7) and Singapore (8).
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