"The report, which has been reviewed by other specialists both in the United States and internationally, ranks the United States 28th over all, behind most of Western Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Costa Rica and Chile but ahead of Russia and South Korea," the Times reported citing the study produced by Yale and Columbia Universities.

"The bottom half of the rankings is largely filled with the countries of Africa and Central and South Asia. Pakistan and India both ranked among the 20 lowest-scoring countries, with overall success ratios of 41.1 and 47.7, respectively," the Times reported on the 2006 Environmental Performance Index.

A new variant on methodology used by the two universities in their Environmental Sustainability index, produced in 2002 and 2005, the new report "was designed to focus more attention on how various governments have played the environmental hands they have been dealt," the Times quoted Daniel Esty, director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and an author of the report, as saying.

Esty said the report was also designed as a tool to help monitor progress on the environmental issues included among the Millennium Development goals adopted by 189 nations at the United Nations Millennium Summit, the report said.

"Like the sustainability index produced last year, the pilot study also ranks countries within their geographic peer groups, so that nations in arid regions or tropical ones can be measured against one another. So Belgium's overall ranking of 39, with a 75.9 percent score, can be viewed by region and by issue. For instance, it ranks last among European countries in protection of its water resources," the Times reported.

The online Times report does not cite all the specific northern European countries mentioned as high achievers on meeting environmental goals.

However Britain, which ranked 65th on last year's sustainability index, came in fifth in the new study, among the 133 nations measured, the Times said.

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