Good country index ranks different countries (163 in total) based on how much they produce good and how much they consume environment. This index consists of seven different categories, which are for instance health, equality, peace work and climate, and it is not surprise to me that Sweden ranks the best country in the world when these topics are considered. Finlands does also pretty well being 7th overall and based on my living and frequent visits to these countries during my PhD and post-doc periods, I can also understand it very well that for instance Denmark ranks 2nd and  The Netherlands 3rd.

All these countries do very well in many categories such as in Health and wellbeing, but I nowadays tend to always evaluate how much people in different countries care and pay attention to equality aspects. These rankings are also well in line with what I have seen as Sweden is again the first, Switzerland 2nd, Denmark 3rd and Finland 4th, but despite all the prosperity and fame, Australia ranks only 66th, although it is overall 18th.

But these country rankings are not the most important thing, but it is how well different countries and people can work together to solve global challenges. One really good example of this is Dutch-Finnish collaboration to build OMI satellite system that can track air pollution in different parts of the world. It was sent to space in 2004 together with NASA’s Aura satellite. Even Barack Obama has highlighted this system and his short YouTube video on this topic is worth of watching.

To read and learn more about Sweden, visit this official site. And if we do not take things so seriously and like a bit of irony, watch also these country “promotion” videos particularly by Finland, Sweden, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and Australia, but also various others to learn more about different countries.