Of the newly industrialised nations, China and India rank 121st and 123rd respectively — reflecting the strain rapid economic growth imposes on the environment, said the report released on Thursday at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010.

However, Brazil and Russia rank 62nd and 69th, suggesting that the level of development is just one of many factors affecting placement in the rankings. The EPI is produced by a team of environmental experts at Yale and Columbia University. The EPI ranks 163 countries on their performance across 25 metrics aggregated into ten categories including:
environmental health, air quality, water resource management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and climate change.

The US is ranked 61st, with strong results on some issues, such as provision of safe drinking water and forest sustainability, and weak performance on other issues including greenhouse gas emissions and several aspects of local air pollution.

This ranking puts the US significantly behind other industrialised nations like Britain (14th), Germany (17th) and Japan (20th). Over 20 members of the European Union outrank the United States.

The United States’ ranking does not reflect the recent policy activities of the Obama Administration, as the 2010 EPI builds on data from before 2009.