Most Eco-Friendly Countries – The Top 5

These are the most environmentally friendly countries

Have you ever heard about EPI? Probably not.

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is an annual ranking that ranks countries on how good they are to meet internationally established environmental targets. Here is the Wikipedia article.  A wide range of factors are being looked into every year, which results in a long list of 180 countries.

And I am pretty sure you want to see the most environmentally-friendly countries in the world?

Most Eco-Friendly Countries – The Top 5

Table of Contents

The list – which are the top 5 most Eco-Friendly Countries in the world?

1. Finland (90.68)
2. Iceland (90.51)
3. Sweden (90.43)
4. Denmark (89.21)
5. Slovenia (88.98)

….and so on. You might quickly see that a lot of the Scandinavian countries are ranking high. However, Norway is down at 17th with 86.9 points – mainly because they still depend heavily on oil export as an income source.

Other “worth mentioned” countries are US, which you can find on 26th and UK at 12th. On the other side of the scale, you find a lot of countries that have been struggling with wars over the last decade. Somalia is on the bottom – with Eritrea, Afghanistan and Mali just above.

FAQ: Relevant questions:

Why are there so few Asian and African countries on these lists?

It depends a lot upon the fact that countries in Asia and Africa have not been through the same economic development as European and North American countries. “Eco-friendliness” is in a strong correlation with GDP per capita.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that the more developed a country is, the easier it is to make their society more eco-friendly. It is quite “easy” for Finland to make a high-speed train to replace the biggest highway. However, that is not easy for Namibia as they can’t even afford to build the highway in the first place…

Is there a video to explain more about why certain countries are more eco-friendly than others?

Yes, there is. I found this video quite interesting:

It gathers information from a series of different sources. That helps you to understand why some countries are on top of some lists, while they are placed lower in other publications. That also gives some insight into how difficult it is to measure something like this.

Is it an actual method to measure “eco-friendliness” accurately?

Not really. The closest you get is trying to measure total CO2 emissions in a certain time period. However, this would not be accurate. If a product is produced in China but shipped to Sweden, China would be given the CO2 emission from producing that product.

As the world gets more and more globalized, measuring how green a country is has become more and more difficult.

That’s why a lot of people aren’t too happy with how this list is measured. To be frank, you will never be able to accurately measure the most eco-friendly country in the world. However, this list is (so far) the best option we have.

4 thoughts on “These are the most environmentally friendly countries”

    1. Avatar

      As a Swede, I guess you might be biased. And as a Norwegian: I totally agree with you though! 😉

      Happiest region in the world, most eco-friendly region in the world…whats next?

  1. Avatar

    how is that measured? I have a strong feeling that the private consumption is not included (such as food waste, airplane travelling and vice versa). And og it was many of the listed countries would loose to many of the developing countries..

    1. Avatar

      Hello Trine,

      I think you are right. The EPI, which is the “logic” behind this list, it seems like government regulations is the key 1 factor. In other words, this is not so dependent on what the citizens for each country do – but how “environmentally friendly” their government is.

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