Belgium ‘dirty man of Europe’

26 January 2005

BRUSSELS – Belgium is the biggest polluter in Europe, according to a world ranking of 146 countries.

The country came 112th in the sustainable environment index which will be presented to this year’s annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The placing is an improvement on last year’s performance when Belgium came 127th.

However, it is still lagging behind other countries when it comes to environmental efforts, biodiversity and clean air.

The American universities Yale and Columbia produced the report, analysing a number of different environmental indicators.

They found Belgium way behind Finland, Norway and Uruguay which topped the table as the least polluting countries.

South Korea was bottom of the table.

Belgium is noticeably less green than its European partners.

Even Britain, which was criticised in the report for not doing enough environmentally, came 66th – behind France, Germany and even the former Soviet states.

The US ranking in the table surprised Europeans – it came in 45th place.

“The EU states have the best quality of water in the world but they have very bad scores for C02 emissions,” said Daniel Esty, one of the authors of the report.

[Copyright Expatica 2005]

Subject: Belgian news