Unfairly calculating ranks

[Apabeossie]

I think calculating Eco-Friendliness by how much a nation spends on environmental issues is not the best idea. Like, recycling, not cutting trees, less polluting is more important. A case of me that I ban fur coats to protect the animals, and ecofriendliness goes down. Im not saying that the current cslculation is bad, but not the best one.Also world census calculate it by recycling awareness index and it gets effected by spending.

Theyre are also many unfair calculations.

[Purpelia]

The NS "issues" game is just a silly game meant to give you a chuckle once in a while whilst you do other things. It's meant to be over the top, unfair, silly and generally wacky. Taking it seriously is just completely missing the point.

[Ransium]

Moved from general to... technical, I guess? Gameplay or Got Issues might work too.

[Trotterdam]

I think calculating Eco-Friendliness by how much a nation spends on environmental issues is not the best idea.

Maybe the census could stand to be renamed, but there's nothing wrong with having this census.

A more involved calculation that takes into account everything the government could to to promote or degrade the environment would simply work the same way as Environmental Beauty. In real life, there can be other factors on the environment than just government policies (a nation whose government doesn't care about the environment might still have a lot of conscientious citizens who try to help the environment on their own initiative, and a nation which naturally has a wet or arid climate would have an accordingly different environment even if humans do nothing), but these are not actually modelled in NationStates, since the only part of your nation that you can actually affect in any way is the government.

[Aclion]

I agree that it could do with a rename, as it only measure what the government spends on the environment(How about "Environmental Spending"?). There is however an Environmental Beauty stat that's more in line with what OP is looking for. So I think the bottom line is that OP just was just misinformed by the names.

[Merconitonitopia]

Speaking as 5th in the world for eco-friendliness... I strongly disagree!

Speaking more seriously, you do have a point. Both "eco-friendliness" and "environmental beauty" don't properly convey how well a country protects its natural environment.
Eco-friendliness refers to how much money the government spends on environmental issues (you can find this in your government pie chart), but as far as actual eco-friendliness goes this is only one part of the equation. By this definition, a country that was heavily polluting and spent an awful lot of money trying to clean up after itself would be more eco-friendly than a country that didn't spend any money on the environment, but didn't pollute it in the first place. When it comes to something like the environment, it's less important what you are doing and more important what you aren't.
Because of this, sometimes you have instances where an obviously pro-environment option can harm how pro-environment the game thinks you are.

So the stat is calculated exactly as it should be, it's just that the name is misleading.