Environmental Sustainability
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Millennium Challenge Corporation - Natural Resource Management Index
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2008 Eco-Region Protection Web Mapper
Introduction
In May 2005 a consortium led by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University, and which included 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. This 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 provide the underlying biome data, and the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Center 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, the 2006-2008 releases of the NRMI used the number of deaths per 1000 children aged 1 to 4 (mx(1-4)). In 2009, thanks to further guidance from the Population Division, the indicator was changed to the probability of dying between age 1 and 5 (4q1), which is highly correlated with mx(1-4). Because the causes of child mortality among 1–4 year olds are strongly influenced by environmental causes, this indicator is considered to be a useful 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 probability of dying to the highest observed probability of dying, which is 0.141, 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 whose children in the 1-5 age group have a probability of dying of 0.004 would have a proximity-to-target score of 97.2 (0.004/0.1414=0.028; 0.028 x100=2.8; 100-2.8=97.2). 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.
Note: For the 2009 release of the NRMI important changes were made to the calculation of the eco-region protection indicator, and using this revised methodolgy ecoregion protection indicators and NRMIs were re-calculated for 2006, 2007, and 2008 in order to produce a consistent time series. The new procedures are explained here in more detail:
- Eco-Region Protection: Methods & Data (PDF, 307KB)
Because the underlying data behind the eco-region protection data are all spatial, the 2008 eco-region protection indicator from the 2008 release of the NRMI is accessible in a simple interactive mapping tool. Though we eliminated international protected areas in the 2009 release, for many countries this elimination did not result in any changes to their eco-region protection indicator and the results for the 2008 release remain broadly valid. To view the protection status by biome for any given country, use the zoom tool to create a bounding box around the country. Then click on the check boxes for the "Protected Areas" and "Terrestrial Biomes" layers to the right, in the Layers menu. The tool is meant to help visualize the distribution of biomes and protected areas within countries in order to make the indicator more understandable. Users wishing to obtain the country level data for biome area and protected area by biome should contact SEDAC User Services.
The data for the Natural Resource Management Index (2009 release) are found in a zip file that contains a spreadsheet (with a time series of NRMIs for 2006-2009 calculated in a consistent manner and a data dictionary) and metadata. Click on it to open it directly, or right-click for options to save it directly to your computer.
- The NRMI 2009 release (zip file containing Excel workbook and metadata, 144KB)
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):
