Do geography and industrial structure affect environmental performance?
They matter. The three countries that rank lowest in the overall ranking are the U.S., Australia, and Canada. Not only are they among the most resource-intensive economies in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but they are also the three largest countries in terms of land area. They all rank poorly on water consumption, waste generation, organic farming, Marine Trophic Index, and certain elements of air quality. It’s difficult to target a single cause of their poor environmental performance. But resource extraction and processing industries often use a lot of water and may contribute to greater stresses on local air quality. A lower-than-average reliance on organic farming in the three countries may also reflect greater reliance on large-scale mechanized farming. Further, greater distances mean greater amounts of energy are required to transport people and to move goods to where they will be consumed, leading to greater GHG emissions. Geography and indus
