Australia Is The 15th ‘Goodest’ Country In The World

The Good Country Index has been launched with a simple yet sure-to-be-controversial aim: to measure the amount of ‘good’ each country contributes to humanity, and conversely what each drains from it.

125 nations have been ranked out of 35 indicators across seven categories: science and technology; culture; international peace and security; world order; planet and climate; prosperity and equality; and health and well-being.

Despite being the birthplace of Bono, Ireland ranks as the ‘goodest’ nation in the world, scoring high in the ‘science and technology’, and ‘planet and climate’ categories. Finland, Switzerland, and Netherlands followed in second, third and fourth places, with New Zealand placing fifth, in part due to high ‘prosperity and equality’ and ‘international peace and security – but mostly because because of this Neil Finn song.

Elsewhere the UK were ranked 7th, the US came in 21st, and Australia ranked a fairly-good goodness ranking of 15th: our poor ‘planet and climate’ score dragged us down for some reason.

While the above seven categories suggest some vagaries or imbalance may be in play, most of the data is provided by international agencies such as the United Nations, and a lengthy FAQ section nicely answers all of your ‘yeahbutwhatabouts?’

 

The developers of the Good Country Index, Simon Anholt and Dr. Robert Govers, stress that “we are not making any moral judgments about countries.”

All in all, their mission statement suggests the list comes from a… good place.

“The biggest challenges facing humanity today are global and borderless […] The trouble is, most countries carry on behaving as if they were islands, focusing on developing domestic solutions to domestic problems. We’ll never get anywhere unless we start to change this habit. The Good Country Index isn’t interested in how well countries are doing, it’s interested in how much they are doing.”