Columbia University’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) has recently released the preliminary 2020 version of the Natural Resource Protection and Child Health Indicators (NRPI and CHI) in support of the country selection process conducted by the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). The MCC bases its selection criteria for foreign assistance on a variety of quantitative governance, social, economic, and environmental indicators, including the NRPI and CHI. The USAID has also begun utilizing the CHI in 2020 to chart progress on the Journey to Self-Reliance, an initiative that fosters sustained self-reliance on the part of developing countries. The NRPI assesses whether a country is protecting at least 17% of all of its biomes (e.g., forests, grasslands, aquatic ecosystems, and tundra). The CHI incorporates three underlying indicators—Access to At Least Basic Sanitation, Access to At Least Basic Water, and Child Mortality, ages 1–4—and serves a useful proxy for key environmental conditions.
The 2020 version of the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), developed by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and CIESIN, has also been released. The EPI ranks 180 countries in two major components, environmental health and ecosystem vitality, based on 32 indicators. Produced every two years since 2006, the EPI is archived and disseminated by NASA's Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) managed by CIESIN. The 2020 release includes a report, data sets for download, and an extensive map gallery of nearly 100 maps visualizing changes in performance over more than two decades.