The Latin American Green City Index seeks to measure and assess the environmental performance of 17 major Latin American cities across a range of criteria. This report presents the key findings and highlights from the Index and is intended to provide stakeholders with a unique tool to help Latin American cities learn from each other, in order to better address the common environmental challenges they face.

Latin America's rural environmental challenges, such as Amazonian deforestation, often receive the most attention from the media, environmentalists and other observers around the world. Although these issues are certainly vital, urban environmental concerns such as traffic congestion, land use policies, waste disposal and air quality are more immediate to the majority of Latin America's residents, simply because 81% of the population already lives in cities. According to the United Nations Population Division, Latin America is the most urbanised region in the developing world. It is already more urbanised than some parts of the developed world. And the percentage of the population living in cities in Latin America is expected to rise further. By 2030, the figure will reach 86%, on a par with Western Europe.

The rapid rise in city populations has had economic, political and social implications, and environmental considerations are a major part of this integrated puzzle. To take one example, urban sprawl has put immense pressure on existing infrastructure, with implications for buildings, public transport, road networks, water quality and access, waste collection, and sanitation. The path of least resistance for development, meanwhile, has often been along existing highways, which encourages residents to use private cars, and contributes to deteriorating air quality. Environmental governance has also been affected, as growing cities now straddle multiple municipal jurisdictions.

The Latin American Green City Index, a research project conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Siemens, seeks to measure and assess the environmental performance of 17 major Latin American cities across a range of criteria. This report presents the key findings and highlights from the Index, and is intended to provide stakeholders with a unique tool to help Latin American cities learn from each other, in order to better address the common environmental challenges they face.

The report is divided into five parts. First, it examines the overall key findings, including an in-depth look at Curitiba, the regional leader. Second, it examines the key findings from the eight individual categories in the Index—energy and CO2, land use and buildings, transport, waste, water, sanitation, air quality and environmental governance. Third, the report presents a variety of leading best-practice ideas from across the region. Fourth, it gives a detailed description of the methodology used to create the Index. Finally, an in-depth profile for each city outlines its particular strengths, weaknesses and ongoing environmental initiatives. These profiles rightly constitute the bulk of the report, because the aim of the study is to share valuable experience.

What the Index measures: Testing common perceptions

The 17 cities selected for the Latin American Green City Index include most major Latin American urban areas. They are both the capital cities of these countries as well as certain leading business capitals selected for their size and importance. The cities were picked independently rather than relying on requests from city governments to be included, in order to enhance the Index's credibility and comparability.

Another decisive factor in the selection was the availability of data. The methodology, described in detail in a separate section in this report, has been developed by the EIU in cooperation with Siemens. It relies on the expertise of both organisations, a panel of outside experts, and the experience from producing last year's European Green City Index. One of the great strengths of the Latin American Green City Index is the breadth of information it uses. There are 31 individual indicators for each city, and these indicators are often based on multiple data points. Value also comes from how the Index is presented. Each city is assessed in eight categories and placed within a performance band to indicate its relative results. The process is transparent, consistent, replicable, and reveals sources of best practice.

Some of the Index results, on first glance, may be surprising. São Paulo, for example, a city with a reputation for chronic traffic congestion and extensive urban sprawl is ranked above average overall. Buenos Aires and Montevideo, however, two pleasant and beautiful cities, perform below average overall. Neither the Index nor these common perceptions are wrong—they rely on different information. Perceptions of cities are often based on subjective observations about quality of life, including factors such as beautiful architecture, recreation or cultural institutions. Residents' environmental perceptions, unsurprisingly, tend to focus on issues that are highly problematic and visible, such as traffic congestion, uncollected waste, or polluted air or rivers. The Index, on the other hand, measures environmental performance across eight categories—energy and CO2, land use and buildings, transport, waste, water, sanitation, air quality and environmental governance—and gives equal weighting to each.

The Index also evaluates policies, which are a reflection of cities' commitment to reducing their future environmental impact. Often it takes the public many years to recognise the effects of new policies. An example is Mexico City. The city is almost certainly better known for its air quality weaknesses than its strengths in transport policies, let alone its advanced eco-building policies; and therefore some might expect it to perform badly overall. The Index, however, because of what it is measuring, takes a different perspective.