Environmental Sustainability
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Millennium Challenge Corporation - Natural Resource Management Index
Methods | Data Download | Policies for Improving Performance | Eco-region Protection Web Mapper
Introduction
In May 2005 a consortium led by CIESIN, the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy (YCELP), the University of New Hampshire Water Systems Analysis Group, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Columbia University Tropical Agriculture Program, submitted a proposal to the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in response to the MCC's search for a Natural Resources Management Indicator. In July 2006 MCC selected a revised version of the proposal, and made its findings public. This revised composite index is comprised of four indicators:
- Eco-region Protection: Developed by CIESIN, this indicator assesses whether a country is protecting at least 10% of all of its biomes (e.g. deserts, forests, grasslands, aquatic, and tundra). It is designed to capture the comprehensiveness of a government’s commitment to habitat preservation and biodiversity protection. World Wildlife Fund and National Geographic provide the underlying eco-region data, and the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Center – in partnership with the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and the World Database on Protected Areas Consortium – provide the underlying data on protected areas.
- Access to Improved Sanitation: Produced by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), this indicator measures the percentage of the population with access to facilities that hygienically separate human excreta from human, animal and insect contact. Facilities such as sewers or septic tanks, poor-flush latrines and simple pit or ventilated improved pit latrines are assumed to be adequate, provided that they are not public.
- Access to Improved Water: Produced by WHO and UNICEF, this indicator measures the percentage of the population with access to at least 20 liters of water per person per day from an “improved” source (household connections, public standpipes, boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs, and rainwater collection) within one kilometer of the user's dwelling.
- Child Mortality (Ages 1-4): Produced by the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, this indicator measures the number of deaths per 1000 children aged 1 to 4. Because the causes of child mortality among 1-4 year olds are strongly influenced by environmental causes, this indicator is considered to be an excellent proxy for underlying environmental conditions.
The NRMI is computed as a standardized proximity-to-target for each of the four measures. For Access to Adequate Sanitation and Access to Improved Water, the proximity-to-target measure is equal to the reported percentage. For example, if a country has 84% of its population with access to adequate sanitation, it is considered to have a proximity-to-target score of 84. For child mortality, we compute the ratio of the measured mortality to the highest observed mortality, which is 40.25, and multiply that by 100 to make it comparable to the 0-100 scale used in the other measures. The proximity-to-target measure is this number, which ranges from 0-100, subtracted from 100. For example, a country with a child mortality of 10 would have a proximity-to-target score of 75.2 (10/40.25=.248; .248x100=24.8; 100-24.8=75.2). For eco-region protection the proximity-to-target score is 10 times the weighted average of the biome protection scores, which are capped at 10% to correspond to the target. For example, a country with an ecoregion protection score of 7 would have a proximity-to-target score of 70. The 10% target was established by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in decision VII/30 as target 1.1 of the 2010 Targets, " At least 10% of each of the world's ecological regions effectively conserved."
The NRMI is the simple average of these four proximity-to-target scores. If a country is missing any of the data points an NRMI is not calculated for it.
Eco-region protection measure was calculated by CIESIN, and therefore the procedures are explained here in more detail. Because the underlying data behind the eco-region protection data are all spatial, we have made them accessible in a simple interactive mapping tool. The tool is meant help visualize the distribution of biomes and protected areas within countries, to make the indicator more understandable.
The data for the NRMI are contained in the following spreadsheet, which comes packaged with a data dictionary. Click on it to open it directly, or right-click for options to save it directly to your computer.
- The NRMI (Excel format, 126KB)
Policies for Improving Performance
Links to a number of resources are provided to governments or individuals who wish to learn more about how to improve their performance on the four components of the NRMI.
- Eco-region Protection:
- Access to Improved Sanitation and Improved Water:
- Child Mortality (Ages 1-4):
