Canada dead last in OECD ranking for environmental protection; Canada dropped from 12th position in 2012, to last of 27 this year

Canada dead last in OECD ranking for environmental protection by Paul Waldie, November 18, 2013, The Globe and Mail
The Washington-based Center for Global Development assesses 27 wealthy nations annually on their commitment to seven areas that impact the world’s poor. Canada came 13th in this year’s survey, which will be released Monday. Denmark led the list, followed by Sweden and Norway, with Japan and South Korea at the bottom. The rankings are based on the center’s “commitment to development index”, or CDI, which tracks each country’s performance in foreign aid, openness to trade, policies that encourage investment, openness to migration, environmental protection, promoting security and supporting technology creation. The countries were chosen because they are all members of an OECD group involved in aid and development measures. Countries such as Russia, China, India and Brazil are not included in the survey because they are not members of the OECD group.

Canada dropped from 12th place last year and did far worse in the environmental protection category, where it ranked 27th. Every other country made progress in this area except Canada, the centre said in a report on the rankings. Canada “has the dubious honor of being the only CDI country with an environment score which has gone down since we first calculated the CDI [in 2003],” the report said. “This reflects rising fossil fuel production and its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s only treaty governing the emissions of heat-trapping gasses. Canada has dropped below the U.S. into bottom place on the environment component.” Owen Barder, a senior fellow at the centre who prepared the index, said in an interview that the environment category has become one of the bright spots in the survey. “Environment is the one part of our index that has really seen improvement and Canada has been the only country that’s fallen,” he said. “My expectation would have been that Canada is environmentally friendly, Canadians all seem to take the environment seriously.” [Emphasis added]