The Environmental Performance Index: Compiling Methods, Experiences And Reference

As in the stage of rapid development of industrialization with a big population, China has more and more environmental problems. Qualitative analysis only cannot develop policy scientifically. Only through the application of quantitative analysis of specific data to reflect the specific problems of the environment, we can develop sound environmental policies. Although China has now completed many aspects of quantitative methods of measurement, the full measure of the environment is basically blank. However, many domestic scholars and institutions have begun to analyze the environmental performance recently. I believe that in the near future, a lot of suitable methods for China will emerge out. This article tries to build a set of indicator system for China's current environmental performance using existing data based on the foreign methods, in hopes of better ideas for future research.This paper is divided into five parts. The first part is the introduction of the whole study, which points out the main environmental problems existing in China, and it also explains the lack of methods for learning the environmental performance, both of which can illustrate the importance of studying the environmental performance for China. Then it also summarizes the researches done both in China and in other countries. The ideas, frameworks and the innovation for this study are also given out in this part.The second part introduces the concept of environmental performance evaluation and the several steps evaluating the environmental performance, and explains the implementation process of Multi-index evaluation method which is often used for evaluating the environmental performance.The third part is the summary of the methods used in evaluating the environmental performance in practice. The Environmental Performance Index developed by Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and Center for International Earth Science Information Network is introduced in detail in the third part of this article, the processes of data processing and the construction of the indicator system and the calculation of the final score have been all given out.The fourth part is the center of this article, a set of indicator system composed of 21 environmental indicators for China is established by drawing the experience of Environmental Performance Index in the third part, using the existing data from the "China Statistical Yearbook (2009)" and "China Environment Statistical Yearbook (2009)", and calculates the final score of the 30 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) except Tibet. The results show the top five regions are Shanghai, Tianjin, Fujian, Sichuan and Zhejiang, while the regions with poor performance include Guizhou, Hunan, Henan, Hainan and Xinjiang. This article also analyzes on both scores of the environmental health and ecosystem vitality for each region, the results indicate that the score on ecosystem vitality is higher than the scores of environmental health generally. And by observing the relationship between per capita GDP and the score, it can be seen that the total score and per capita GDP have some positive correlation, while higher score on environmental health also relate to higher per capita GDP, but there is little correlation between the score on ecosystem vitality and per capita GDP. The score of the ecosystem vitality and per capita GDP basically has no relationship, which was caused by the performance of some environmental indicators in the ecosystem vitality cannot be improved by simple investments. Through analysis of the 30 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) scores, it is can be seen that all of China's provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) are required to introduce more appropriate policies and increase investment to strengthen the ecosystem vitality of the environment. As for the environmental health, the scores are really well in some areas, while the scores of some other areas are indeed too low, so areas with low scores should learn experience from regions with high scores to increase the score of each index.The last part is the summary of the whole study. it explains the conclusion got from the empirical analysis for the 30 regions except Tibet in China, while the policy meaning is also explained here. Finally, this paper points out some shortcomings. On one hand, China has limited data, the optional indicators are small, and the choice of indicators is subjective. On the other hand, due to the lack of the data for Tibet's six indicators, the paper drops it, which can not reflect the actual environmental situation in Tibet. The outlook for the future study on evaluating environmental performance in China is also given out at the end of this paper.