New Indicators for Environmental Governance

Report from IDB and WJP Focuses on Ten Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean

A healthy environment is critical to public health, ecosystem vitality, and the sustainability of societies. A majority of countries have endorsed this view and adopted environmental laws or included the right to a healthy environment in their constitutions. However, practice often lags behind the adoption of environmental laws, and to date, there have been very little data to help understand and address this gap. 

The newly-released report on Environmental Governance Indicators for Latin America and the Caribbean© (EGI) represents a first-ever effort to address this challenge by measuring how environmental governance functions in practice in ten countries in the region: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Jamaica, Peru, and Uruguay. This study is the result of a collaborative research effort undertaken by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Justice Project (WJP).
 

Data Insights
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The EGI features key regional trends and insights on environmental governance, as well as detailed profiles for each country. The EGI's 11 primary indicators presented in the report are derived from an Environmental Qualified Respondents' Questionnaire (EQRQ) completed by more than 500 in-country lawyers, academics, non-governmental organizations, and management consultants with expertise in environmental issues. In addition, the EGI features indicators from third-party data sources to provide a more complete contextual picture of each country's environmental governance.

Highlights from the EGI Data Insights:

• There are gaps between the laws and implementation in practice.
   
• Regulatory agencies face enforcement challenges, driven in part by constraints on human and financial capacity.
   
• Countries perform well when it comes to political rights generally, but the rights of environmental defenders are a concern.
   
• Pollution control is a challenge for air quality, water quality, and waste management.
   
• Greater transparency is needed in the mining and extractive sector.
   
• Environmental governance correlates with level of economic development, with important exceptions.
   

Sample Country Profile Data
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Upcoming Webinar
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The IDB and WJP will hold a public webinar in November to present the methodology and key data insights from the EGI as well as to discuss the results of the study with country experts. Please stay tuned for event details!