Mauritius advances outstandingly in the worldwide classification of ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE INDEX (EPI) developed by the universities of Yale and from Columbia to the United States.

Mauritius has been ranked 6th out of 163 countries (first in Africa) in the 2010 Environment Performance Index.

This index is prepared by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy of Yale University and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network of Columbia University, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

Mauritius has scored a total of 80.6 out of 100 and is placed sixth after Iceland, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Sweden and Norway.

The Environment Performance Index evaluates the performance of countries on 25 indicators tracked across 10 policy categories covering both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality.

The overall Environment Performance Index rankings provide an indicative sense of which countries are doing best against the array of environmental pressures that every nation faces.

In the last classification published in 2008, Mauritius was ranked 58th.