LONDON, July 4 /PRNewswire/ -- As the G8 prepare to meet in Italy this week, the second global ranking of the ecological efficiency with which the world's nations deliver long and happy lives for the people who live there - the 'Happy Planet Index' - reveals a surprising picture of the relative wealth and progress of nations.

    - Latin America tops the Index with Costa Rica the 'greenest
      and happiest' country. Nine of the ten highest-scoring nations are
      Latin American
    - The USA, China and India were all 'greener and happier' twenty
      years ago than today
    - The world's richest plummet from 1960s to late 1970s, with scores
      still lower today than 1961
    - The UK comes 74th, USA 114th out of 143 nations surveyed.

The report, The Happy Planet Index 2.0: Why good lives don't have to cost the earth, published today, Saturday 4 July 2009, by nef (the new economics foundation) presents the results of the second global compilation of the Happy Planet Index (HPI). The new Index is based on improved data for 143 countries around the world, representing 99 per cent of the world's population. The report, with a foreword by the ecological economist, Herman Daly, shows that globally, we are still far from achieving good lives within the Earth's finite resource limits. And, although there are signs of hope, overall we are still heading in the wrong direction.

The HPI provides the first ever analysis of trends over time for what are supposedly the world's most developed nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The results are not promising:

    - OECD nations' HPI scores plummeted between 1960 and the late
      1970s. Although there have been some gains since then, HPI scores were
      still higher in 1961 than in 2005. Life satisfaction and life
      expectancy combined have increased 15 per cent over the 45-year period,
      but it has come at an earth-shattering cost - an increase in ecological
      footprint per head of 72 per cent.
    - Of a group of 36 major nations it was possible to track over time
      in detail, around two-thirds increased their HPI scores marginally
      between 1990 and 2005, but the three largest countries in the world
      China, India and the USA (all aggressively pursuing growth-based
      development models) have all seen their HPI scores drop in that time.

'As the world faces the triple crunch of deep financial crisis, accelerating climate change and the looming peak in oil production we desperately need a new compass to guide us. Following the siren's song of economic growth has delivered only marginal benefits to the World's poorest whilst undermining the basis of their livelihoods. What's more, it hasn't notably improved the well-being of those who were already rich, or even provided economic stability.