EDI is a unique index measuring the extent of rights to participate in environmental decision making, which has no analogue. EDI measures the degree to which countries have enacted legally binding rules and adopted practices that provide for environmental information collection and disclosure; public participation across a range of environmental decisions; and fair, affordable, and independent avenues for seeking justice and challenging decisions that impact the environment.
In 2014, World Resources Institute1, in partnership with the Access Initiative2, calculated Environmental Democracy Index (EDI) to measure the extent and degree to which national laws in 70 countries promote environmental democracy rights. Ukraine was one of them, Environment-People-Law’s lawyer – Yelyzaveta Aleksyeyeva participated in the project as a national researcher.
In 2021 EPL decided to use WRI initial questionnaire and scoring methodology to measure the progress made by Ukraine over the period of time when the first EDI for Ukraine was calculated by the WRI project and December 31, 2020.
Having re-evaluated Ukraine’s Environmental Democracy Index, Environment-People-Law found a tangible increase of political freedoms, general rule of law, and transparency in environmental matters that happened over the last six years in Ukraine. Due to a successful implementation of environmental assessments reform in 2017-2018 (adoption of the laws of Ukraine On Environmental Impact Assessment and On strategic environmental assessment) the score on participation pillar increased by 26 % from 0,69 to 1,47 (out of 3 max). As a result, the total EDI score in the second cycle increased by 17 % from 1,58 to 2,09 (out of 3 max).
There is however still room for further improvement. In the years to come due to the EU association processes Ukraine will continue to actively develop environmental policy and legislation, of which environmental democracy mechanisms constitute a significant part. Environment-People-Law is intended to use EDI in the future to measure this progress.
The full research description, methodology and results are available at
EDI full result data WRI 2014 (all countries) is available at https://www.environmentaldemocracyindex.org/node/13967.html
EDI full result data 2014 (Ukraine) is available at
EDI full result data 2020 (Ukraine) is available at
EDI score data 2014 and 2020 (Ukraine) is available at
