This layer shows the overall 2016 Environmental Democracy Index for 70 countries around the world. The map also shows the total population of each country for reference.The Environmental Democracy Index is an average of three overall pillars: transparency, participation, and justice. These pillars are made up of 23 guidelines adopted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which are arithmetic averages of 75 legal indicators. As described on the Background and Methodology page, the Environmental Democracy Index rides on the following:"Environmental democracy is rooted in the idea that meaningful public participation is critical to ensure that land and natural resource decisions adequately and equitably address citizens’ interests. At its core, environmental democracy involves three mutually reinforcing rights:the right to freely access information on environmental quality and problemsthe right to participate meaningfully in decision-makingthe right to seek enforcement of environmental laws or compensation for harm.Protecting these rights, especially for the most marginalized and vulnerable, is the first step to promoting equity and fairness in sustainable development. Without essential rights, information exchange between governments and the public is stifled and decisions that harm communities and the environment cannot be challenged or remedied. Establishing a strong legal foundation is the starting point for recognizing, protecting and enforcing environmental democracy. "The population estimate comes from the Esri 2016 World Population Estimate.

Environmental Democracy Index (EDI) consists of 75 legal indicators developed under 23 of the UNEP Bali Guidelines that are concerned with the development and implementation of legislation. In addition to the legal indicators, EDI includes 24 supplemental indicators that assess whether there is evidence that environmental democracy is being implemented in practice. The EDI legal indicators assess laws, constitutions, regulations and other legally binding, enforceable rules at the national level. Quality/Lineage: The data is downloaded from the above link http://environmentaldemocracyindex.org/rank-countries#all and manipulated only table format keeping the value same for all the countries as the requirement of the Strive database. The map is created based on the values of the country using rworldmap package in R.