Environmental Governance Indicators for Latin America and the Caribbean

The Environmental Governance Indicators for Latin America and the Caribbean© represent the first-ever cross-country assessment of how environmental governance functions in practice. This quantitative assessment tool measures the state of environmental governance in 10 countries in the region: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Jamaica, Peru, and Uruguay.
 

Read the full report in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.
 

A healthy environment is critical to public health, ecosystem vitality, and the sustainability of societies. A majority of countries have endorsed this view and adopted environmental laws or included the right to a healthy environment in their constitutions. However, practice often lags behind the adoption of environmental laws, and to date, there have been very little data to help understand and address this gap. The Environmental Governance Indicators for Latin America and the Caribbean© (EGI) represent the first-ever effort to address this challenge by measuring how environmental governance functions in practice across 10 countries in the region. This study is the result of a collaborative research effort undertaken by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Justice Project (WJP).

The EGI provides new data on 11 primary indicators of environmental governance for each country: 1) Regulation and Enforcement; 2) Civic Engagement; 3) Fundamental Environmental and Social Rights; 4) Access to and Quality of Justice; 5) Air Quality and Climate; 6) Water Quality and Resources; 7) Biodiversity; 8) Forestry; 9) Oceans, Seas, and Marine Resources; 10) Waste Management; and 11) Extraction and Mining.

The EGI features key regional trends and insights on environmental governance, as well as detailed profiles for each country. The data presented in the report are derived from an Environmental Qualified Respondents' Questionnaire (EQRQ) completed by more than 500 in-country lawyers, academics, non-governmental organizations, and management consultants with expertise in environmental issues. In addition, the EGI features indicators from third-party data sources to provide a more complete contextual picture of each country’s environmental governance.
 

Data Insights Highlights

Sample Country Profile | Click to expand

(Download report below for full profiles)

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The Environmental Governance Indicators for Latin America and the Caribbean is a joint research effort by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Justice Project (WJP).