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What the tide of globalization brings is unprecedented impact on humankind by global environmental problems and these problems have become the economic, political and cultural problems that restrict human existence and development. It can be said that the humankind is entering the era when the competition begins to focus on environment. This book for the first time introduces Global Environment Competitiveness (GEC) as a new way of weighing competitiveness and demonstrates a nation’s environment competitiveness through five elements, ecological environment, resource environment, environment carrying, environmental management and environment harmony, in the hope of providing reference for all countries to do complete and scientific analysis on environmental situation and to propose environmental development strategy. This part selects 133 countries of the world (See Fig. 6.1) as samples to analyze the distribution and rankings of global and regional environment competitiveness in 2012 so that the development changes, influencing factors and future trends of global competitiveness can be revealed, which will provide helpful reference for realization of sustainable development around the globe.

Fig. 6.1
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Distribution of evaluated countries on world map

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1 Overall Evaluation of GEC

1.1 GEC Evaluation Results

The research group completes the evaluation and analysis on the Global Environment Competitiveness in 2012 based on the GEC Evaluation Indicator System and mathematical model. Table 6.1 gives the environment competitiveness rankings and scores of the countries in 2012 and Fig. 6.2 shows the environment competitiveness scores of the six continents of the world and the top 3 countries in each continent.

Table 6.1 GEC primary & sub-index scores and rankings 2012
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Fig. 6.2
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Environment competitiveness scores of six continents and top 3 countries in each continent

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1.1.1 GEC Comprehensive Ranking

As Table 6.1 shows, countries with global environment competitiveness ranking 1st–10th include Switzerland, Germany, Norway, New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, Costa Rica, Austria, United Kingdom and France; the 11th–20th rankings are Ecuador, Venezuela, RB, Slovak, Sweden, Bolivia, Honduras, Guatemala, Canada, Gabon and Colombia; the 21st–30th rankings are Australia, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Belgium, United States, Slovenia, Finland, Philippines and Denmark; and the bottom ten countries are Kuwait, Yemen, Rep., Libya, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Mali, Iraq, Lesotho and Niger, all listed in order of rank.

1.1.2 Overall GEC Scores

In 2012, the highest GEC score was 58.7 points, the lowest score was 32.3 points and the average score was 49.6 points; this indicates that the overall environment competitiveness in all countries of the world is yet to be improved, as there is not a single country that scored over 60 points.

The distribution of GEC scores of the countries shows ladder pattern. Among these, 18 countries scored over 55 points; 47 countries scored between 50 and 55 points; 49 countries scored between 45 and 50 points; 13 countries scored between 40 and 45 points; 5 countries scored between 35 and 40 points; 1 country scored between 30 and 35 points; and no country scored below 30 points. It is obvious that most countries scored above 45 points and only a few countries obtained scores lower than 45 points. Furthermore, the standard deviation of GEC scores was as small as 4.8, which means the difference between the environment competitiveness in the countries are not large, and particularly the difference between countries with close rankings was very small.

Countries with higher scores are mainly developed countries and there are 17 developed countries among the top 30 rankings, accounting for a ratio of 56.7 %, and 8 developed countries among the top 10 rankings, accounting for a ratio of 80.0 %. Countries with lower scores are mostly developing countries, mainly because of the long-existing wide gap in socioeconomic development foundation, environmental protection input, environment management and environmental technology between developed and developing countries.

In order to intuitively make a comparative analysis on the environment competitiveness of the countries, the environment competitiveness scores in 2012 are presented in Fig. 6.3. As the figure shows, there are 67 countries that scored higher than the average score, accounting for 50.38 % of total countries. As a whole, the difference between all countries was not large, but the scores of bottom ten countries were left far behind other countries, especially Niger ranking the last, whose score was 32.3, leaving 26.4 points of gap from the highest score and even 17.3 points of gap from the average score. Among developed countries, the highest score 58.7 goes to Switzerland, ranking the 1st place; the lowest score 44.3 goes to Qatar, ranking 118th place. Among developing countries, the highest score 57.5 goes to Brazil, ranking the 5th and the lowest score 32.3 goes to Niger, ranking the 133rd.

Fig. 6.3
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GEC rankings and scores 2012

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1.2 GEC Factor Scores and Contribution Rate

Table 6.1 is the evaluation result of the sub-indexes for GEC in 2012 and shows the scores and rankings of the five sub-indexes.

The standard deviation of Ecological Environment Competitiveness (EEC) in 2012 is 9.3, indicating that the indicator demonstrates the largest difference between countries and it is the key factor leading to the difference in environment competitiveness among the countries. Besides, the standard deviation values of Environmental Management Competitiveness (EMC) and Environmental Harmony Competitiveness (EHC) are also as high as 9.1 and 8.9, which are also the important causes of competitiveness difference. As for the standard deviation values of Resource Environment Competitiveness (REC) and Environment Carrying Competitiveness (ECC) are relatively small. ECC’s standard deviation is the smallest, at 5.3, which means that ECC has little influence on the environment competitiveness difference between the countries. Basically, the overall environment competitiveness of the countries shows no big difference, while the major causes for competitiveness difference are reflected in EEC, EMC and EHC; of course, REC and ECC also exert certain influence, but at lesser degree. Therefore, countries with weak environment competitiveness need to especially strengthen the efforts in EEC, EMC and EHC, so as to narrow the gap between them and other countries and to significantly enhance their environmental competitiveness.

In order to better analyze sub-indexes’ contribution to primary indicator, the scores of sub-indexes are multiplied by respective weights and converted to the scores reflected on primary indicator; after divided by the total score of primary indicator, the contribution rates of each sub-index can be obtained. In this way, each sub-index’s contribution to the primary indicator will be straightforward, as shown in Fig. 6.4.

Fig. 6.4
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Contribution rates of GEC sub-indexes 2012

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Figure 6.4 shows that ECC made the greatest contribution to GEC, with an average contribution rate of 27.0 %; EHC was the second greatest contributor, at a rate of 26.2 %; the contribution rate of REC and EMC were both 19.8 %; REC made the least contribution, at a rate of 7.2 %. Therefore, ECC and EHC are the two indicators that deserve special attention for all countries in their process of enhancing environmental competitiveness. Of course, the effects of REC, EEC and EMC must not be neglected.

1.3 GEC Echelon Scores

Table 6.2 lists the average scores of the five echelons (First Echelon: countries ranking 1st–10th; Second Echelon: countries ranking 11th–30th; Third Echelon: countries ranking 31st–60th; Fourth Echelon: countries ranking 61st–100th; Fifth Echelon: countries ranking 101st–133rd) of GEC in 2012.

Table 6.2 Average environmental competitiveness scores of each echelon 2012
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As shown in the table, the average environmental competitiveness scores of first, second and third echelons are close with small difference, presenting a ratio of 1.11:1.05:1. The difference between the fourth and fifth echelons and the previous three echelons are larger and the score of First Echelon is 1.33 times that of Fifth Echelon, leaving a gap of 14.1 points.

The average REC score of each echelon shows very big difference, presenting a ratio of 1.83:1.91:1.67:1.34:1.

The average EEC score of each echelon also shows big difference, presenting a ratio of 1.50:1.33:1.22:1.08:1.

The difference of average ECC scores between the echelons is slight, presenting a ratio of 1.11:1.07:1.06:1.03:1.

The average EMC score of each echelon shows big difference, presenting a ratio of 1.48:1.38:1.30:1.22:1.

The difference of average EHC scores between the echelons is small, presenting a ratio of 1.23:1.21:1.18:1.14:1.

Table 6.2 and Fig. 6.5 together may better describe the scores of the primary indicator and sub-indexes in each echelon and it is each to find that, except for REC, the scores of environmental competitiveness and the other four sub-indexes diminishes from first to fifth echelon; the REC score of each echelon is the lowest and the highest case is only 23.4 points; the difference between the EEC scores of first and fifth echelons is most distinct, while the difference of ECC scores among all echelons is the least.

Fig. 6.5
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2012 GEC and sub-index scores by echelon

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