| Abstract: |
The Commitment to Development Index (CDI) ranks 21 of the world’s richest
countries on their dedication to policies that benefit the five billion people
living in poorer nations. Moving beyond simple comparisons of foreign aid, the
CDI ranks countries on seven themes: quantity and quality of foreign aid,
openness to developing-country exports, policies that influence investment,
migration policies, stewardship of the global environment, security policies
and support for creation and dissemination of new technologies. This year for
the first time, CGD research fellow David Roodman extended the environment
component of the Index to cover four of the biggest developing countries:
Brazil, Russia, India and China, a group Goldman Sachs dubbed the “BRICs.”
This working paper explores the indicators that make up the environment
component (global climate, sustainable fisheries, and biodiversity and global
ecosystems) and explains how the BRIC countries stack up to their
right-country counterparts. He finds that the BRICs score remarkably well
compared to the 21 rich countries covered by the Index: when thrown in with
the usual 21, they rank second, fourth, fifth, and eleventh. They generally
perform well on the greenhouse gas emissions, consumption of ozone-depleting
substances, and tropical timber imports. And the BRICs have joined important
international environmental accords. As a group, their major weakness is low
gas taxes. In addition, Amazon deforestation and heavy fossil fuel use pull
Brazil and Russia, respectively, below the CDI 21 average on greenhouse
emissions per capita. China’s abstention from the U.N. fisheries agreement
puts it a half point below the other BRICs. |