Month: July 2024

• Published as “Decline and collapse is the future for ‘business as usual’

If we want that to change, we need a new global emphasis on wellbeing metrics rather than pure economic growth

Dr. Trevor Hancock

23 July 2024

703 words

The UN Environment Programme just published an important report called Navigating New Horizons, which is “a global foresight report on planetary health and human wellbeing” – precisely my main area of work. Moreover, it links up with another of my main areas of interest – my work as a health futurist, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.

Now good futures thinking isn’t about predicting the future, particularly when you are dealing with very changeable social and political systems, especially when you understand that such systems are subject to sudden, non-linear change; they can reach tipping points and change very rapidly and in sometimes unpredictable ways.

My work as a health futurist mainly involved helping people think about a range of plausible alternative futures. From there, people can think about which of the plausible alternatives they would prefer, which they would want to avoid, and what they might need to do to reach their preferable future.

One of the plausible futures we face – usually thought of as the probable future – is ‘business as usual’; basically, just more of the same, but bigger and better. So for years, decades in fact, ‘business as usual’ has meant a continuation of the system of economic growth and material consumption that took off after the Second World War, a process that the Stockholm Resilience Centre dubbed ‘the Great Acceleration’.

But more than 50 years ago we were warned by the Club of Rome, in their landmark report ‘The Limits to Growth’ that ‘business as usual’ would lead to decline and collapse in the mid-21st century – still a generation away. Now we are almost there.

So right now, what appears to be an increasingly plausible future is some sort of ecological, social and economic decline, or even collapse in some places. This is because, to return to my recent columns on values, “Ecosystems support societies that create economies”, as the Worldwide Fund for Nature has noted.

When we try to operate in contradiction to that dictum, we drive ecosystems into decline, or even into collapse, and with them the societies and communities that depend upon them. Increasingly, then ‘decline and collapse’ is the ‘business as usual’ future, the probable future, which is in itself an interesting shift in perception.  

One of the key messages of the UNEP report is that acceleration is itself accelerating: “The speed of change is staggering”, the report states, adding that “it has become clear that the world is facing a different context than it faced even ten years ago.” This is due to “the rapid rate of change combined with technological developments, more frequent and devastating disasters and an increasingly turbulent geopolitical landscape.”

Indeed, UNEP notes, “The world is already on the verge of what may be termed ‘polycrisis’—where global crises are not just amplifying and accelerating but also appear to be synchronizing..” The report identifies eight critical global shifts or phenomena that we need to understand and learn to manage; I will explore them next week.

Clearly, decline and collapse is not a preferable future, at least not from humanity’s perspective, although Mother Nature may welcome it as a way of ridding herself of a pest! But nor is ‘business as usual’ preferable, since as already noted, it leads to decline and collapse.

But the message of the UNEP report is not one of despair. On the contrary, there is hope: “The good news”, states the UNEP, “is that just as the impact of multiple crises is compounded when they are linked, so are the solutions.”  Thus we can “shift the momentum from the brink of polycrisis to polystability.”

The report suggests there are two key changes we need to make: “a focus on intergenerational equity and a new social contract reinforcing shared values that unite us rather than divides us.” A third important change that will help bring about the needed transformation, UNEP notes, is “Placing a new global emphasis on wellbeing metrics rather than pure economic growth.”

If you understand intergenerational equity as referring in particular to the state of the planet we pass on to future generations, then it is noteworthy that once again we are talking about transformations in values relating to the Earth, each other and the economy.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “Core-value change has to come from the grassroots”

Rights-based arguments such as those used to fight the tobacco industry could be a powerful tool — including the rights of future generations to a healthy environment

Dr. Trevor Hancock

16 July 2024

701 words

It is said that every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets. If so, then our current system seems perfectly designed to push us beyond planetary boundaries in a variety of Earth systems, while creating widespread and worsening inequality. This presents a massive threat to the wellbeing of current and future generations.

For the past few weeks I have been exploring the underlying core values that drive many of our systems, institutions and choices. When I look at the state of the world today, and in particular our relationship with nature and with each other,  it is clear we are being driven by a set of core values that are not fit for purpose in the 21^st century. And I have suggested a set of core values that are compatible with ensuring a healthy, just and sustainable future for all, while protecting and restoring the planet’s vital systems.

All well and good, but how do we bring about these massive and rapid value shifts? How do we, as the late Will Steffen put it, reach social tipping points before we reach ecological ones? One thing for sure, there isn’t an app for that! But I do have some thoughts.

I spent a chunk of my time in the early 1980s in the fight against the tobacco industry. The social tipping point for smoking came when smoking came to be seen as an abuse of the rights of non-smokers. So using rights-based arguments could be powerful. There have been calls for the recognition of the right to a healthy environment. Indeed, B.C.’s own David Boyd, as UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, championed this through the UN, with the General Assembly recognising in 2022 that a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a human right.

Then there are the rights of future generations to a healthy environment. Several court cases around the world have successfully argued that case with respect to government failures to slow or stop greenhouse gas emissions, while the Welsh National Assembly passed a Wellbeing of Future Generations Act and created a Commissioner to oversee it.

Beyond that, we need to consider the right of nature and of other species to exist. A number of countries around the world have recognised land and water systems as persons (e.g. the Whanganui River and Te Urewera in Aotearoa New Zealand); after all, if corporations can be considered persons, why not the much more obviously alive ecosystems?

Related to all this is the need to expand the powerful set of values concerning social justice to include inter-generational, inter-communal and inter-species justice. The 1987 Brundtland report on sustainable development stated we should “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

But when we deplete a resource, poison an ecosystem or create long-term change in vital Earth systems, we are acting in an unjust manner towards other people and places, future generations and other species.  

But core value change cannot be imposed from above, it has to come from the grassroots. Earth For All, about which I wrote a series of columns between October 2022 and September 2023, was clear on what is needed: “fresh conversations in every home, every school, every university, every city, every parliament. What is the future we want? How can our operating system get us there?” And, I would add, what we value and what our values should be.

Because the root of this series of columns on values was my homily at the First Unitarian Church, I want to end with specific reference to the role of faith communities. After all, faith communities are all about values, about our relationship with ‘creation’, however that is understood, and about community, the very things I have been writing about.

They can play an important role in initiating and leading explorations and discussions about the  new ethical frameworks for society that reflect the constellation of values – human solidarity, quality of life, and ecological sensibility, as The Great Transition Initiative puts it – that we need.

Such work is essential if we are to achieve the great turnaround in societal values we need, locally and globally.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

If we want government and corporate leaders to change their values, we need to change ours

Dr. Trevor Hancock

9 July 2024

700 words

As I near the end of my series of columns on values fit for the 21^st century, I return to my May 26^th column, in which I took our government and corporate leaders to task for reflecting and embracing a set of neoliberal values that are incompatible with planetary health and societal wellbeing in the 21^st century.

Their self-interested blind adherence to ‘business as usual’, I wrote, to an economic system and underlying core values that plainly work against our long-term interests, is because they get so much benefit – wealth, power, status – from the way things are. But while I think they need to change their values, I do not believe that this can happen if society itself does not change its values.

After all, while we may call them ‘leaders’, in many ways they are simply followers. An old adage in politics, after all, is not to get too far out ahead of the parade, and to always look back and make sure it is still following you.

At the same time, though, while keen to go along with what the society itself values, they are trying to shape societal values to match their own and their party’s ideologies, trying to persuade people it is in their best interest.

Meanwhile, corporate leaders are interested in promoting their products and selling more of everything so they can grow their profits and their power. So they too are trying to shape societal values to match their own and their corporation’s ideologies, trying to persuade people it is in their best interest.

As a result, the whole, society – aided and abetted by those ‘leaders’ – goes along with the mis-aligned set of values that are at the root of our ecological, social and economic crises: A lack of connection to and reverence for the Earth, the valuing of individualism at the expense of society, the derogation of government and of regulation and taxation, the valuing of a narrow concept of wealth and the continual growth of an economic system that harms the Earth and many humans.

So the fourth set of values that have to be transformed relates to an explicit set of priorities embodied in the World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) piece of ‘scripture’ that was the basis of my April homily at the First Unitarian Church: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work the other way around.”

The sad truth is, however, that we try to make it work the other way around. By prioritising the economy, we allow it to distort society and harm the Earth’s natural systems that are the ultimate determinant of our health. In the set of dominant values today, it is clear that the economy usually comes first.

We see the Finance Minister and the budget dominating much of government and the news. We hear economics correspondents talking a lot about the GDP and whether it is growing or shrinking. We are fed business and economic data on a daily, even an hourly basis.

It is only recently – thanks to the intitative of Professor Rick Kool at Royal Roads University – and only on CBC’s ‘On the Island’ radio show, as far as I know – that the daily CO2 levels are also reported.

But nobody is giving us indicators of  the state of our local and global ecosystems, which  are largely excluded from the reckoning of our economic systems. And we certainly are not given the happiness or quality of life index or the wellbeing numbers on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis.

So what is it we actually value? Should money really take precedence over wellbeing for all and planetary health? Is that the sort of society we want for our children and grandchildren, and for future generations all over the world? I hope not, for their sake.

We need a conversation, in this region, across Canada and indeed around the world, about the WWF’s seemingly simple but profound statement, about the values that are incompatible with this simple worldview, and an exploration of the values that are compatible with “a planetary civilization rooted in solidarity, sustainability, and human well-being”, as the Global Scenario Group put it.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

We need to ensure the economy is subservient to, not dominant over, societal wellbeing and planetary health.

• Published as “The economy should serve well-being, planet health, not dominate them”
• The economy is not a natural phenomenon, it is a human construct, so if it doesn’t work for us we should change it

Dr. Trevor Hancock

2 July 2024

702 words

In exploring the need for a transformation of our values so they are fit for purpose in the 21^st century I have been using a piece of ‘scripture’ from the World Wide Fund for Nature’s 2014 Living Planet Report.

The third realm from my piece of ‘scripture’ is the economy, and the text makes an important but often over-looked point: Societies create economies. The economy is not a natural phenomenon, it is a human construct, so if it doesn’t work for us we should change it.

Well, this economy does not work for us. The Institute for Health Improvement, rooting its idea in systems engineering, states: “Every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets”. Our current economic system seems perfectly designed to damage and destroy the Earth’s natural systems while undermining society and heightening inequality.

At the heart of this problem are a set of values that prize money, wealth, greed, profit and ‘stuff’ above planetary health and societal and human wellbeing; that is opposed to paying taxes on principle; that covets and accumulates power by heightening inequality, and that adheres to the absurd notion of indefinite growth. 

Disastrously, the only wealth that is really valued is economic wealth, be it money or ‘stuff’. As I noted in an earlier column, natural capital is not included in most economic models, nor for that matter are human or social capital. The latter, by the way, is distinguished from human capital because human capital is all about the ‘wealth’ of an individual – their level of education, creativity, health, sense of compassion etc – while social capital is all about the extent and strength of our relationships with each other – the realm of community and society.

But in the 21^st century we have to value all these forms of wealth, which means we need at the very least to reform capitalism so it integrates all these forms of capital. Real capitalists increase all forms of capital at the same time, and they most certainly do not deplete natural, social or human capital just so they can increase economic capital – that is false capitalism.

Turning to taxes, nobody said it better than US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes a century or so ago: “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society”. So if you have a nagging feeling that society is less civilised than it used to be – and a society with the levels of hunger and homelessness we see today can hardly be called civilised – then there is your answer.

When it comes to the issue of continuous economic growth, Kenneth Boulding, a former President of both the American Economic Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told the U.S. Congress as far back as 1973: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

So the third set of value transformations we need has to do with the economy, which must a) be consistent with the reality of the finite and limited Earth on which we live, and b) be in service to society, thus creating the conditions that enable wellbeing for all, both now and for future generations.

Among other things, that means abandoning the absurd and impossible dream – actually, the nightmare – of perpetual and exponential growth, in favour of a steady state economy. That will mean valuing sufficiency rather than affluence and excess: As the late Herman Daly wrote, “Enough should be the central concept in economics,” where enough means “sufficient for a good life”.

We also need to find new and better ways to value progress. The GDP was never intended as a measure of social welfare, and it is profoundly misleading, since it includes many unhealthy and indeed harmful costs, such as the costs of cleaning up after disasters or all the money spent on tobacco as well as the costs of treating tobacco-related diseases.

Alternatives include the Genuine Progress Indicator, Gross National Happiness, as pioneered by Bhutan, and here in Canada, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. But above all else, the economy must be put in its place – subservient to, not dominant over, societal wellbeing and planetary health.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

We need a re-awakening of our sense of kinship with and shared responsibility for our fellow humans, of a sense of community

Dr. Trevor Hancock

25 June 2024

699 words

I am exploring my ‘scriptural text’ from the Word Wide Fund for Nature’s 2014 Living Planet Report that was the basis of my homily for the First Unitarian Church back in April. The report stated: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work the other way around.”

Many of our problems, I believe, stem from a mis-aligned set of values that are unfit for the 21^st century challenges we face. Those values relate to the three realms included in my chosen text: The Earth (ecosystems), society and the economy, and how we prioritise among them. Two weeks ago I discussed our need to develop a reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is, at its heart, spiritual.

The second realm from my bit of scripture is society, and thus about our relationship with each other. In recent decades, we have seen society and community de-valued and undermined by a radical neo-liberal philosophy that prioritises the individual over society and community; promotes the pursuit of self-interest and greed over the common interest, which it devalues; worships profit and wealth above all else; and sees government as a problem that gets in the way of private wealth accumulation.

I was born in 1948, the same year that the National Health Service was established in the UK. The years that followed, the years in which I grew up and went to medical school, were a time of public investment in housing, education and social welfare. But with the advent of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the triumph of neo-liberal values, much of that has been torn down.

In the pursuit of lower taxes, smaller government and increased private wealth, we have abandoned social housing and cut back on education funding (ask yourself why schools are scrambling to fund arts and music, why university departments of humanities are struggling to survive?). We have reduced unionisation, kept wages and social welfare low and pared back on benefits. Among other things we have seen the re-appearance of food banks and homeless encampments. Is the average person better off for these changes?

On top of all that, we have become a much more atomised, alienated and lonely society; in fact, loneliness is now recognised as a significant and growing public health problem! This is not only because of the emphasis on individual responsibility (which absolves the government and the corporations of responsibility), but also because of the insidious impact of what I have started to call the ‘anti-social media’ that have come to dominate so much of our lives.

Yet humans are perhaps above all else a social species. So the second set of transformed values I propose is the need for what the Great Transition Initiative calls ‘solidarity’, a re-awakening of our sense of kinship with and shared responsibility for our fellow humans, of a sense of community.

We need to value society and community, not necessarily above the individual but equally, seeking a better balance between individual and shared rights and responsibilities. Related to this, we need to value the common good – including in particular the common good of future generations – over the pursuit of short-term self-interest at the expense of others.

A recent letter to this newspaper from David Conway expressed the same point at the national and international level. He was objecting to what is in essence a very whiny and selfish view; that Canada is so small that what we do does not matter – so let’s keep on expanding fossil fuels, driving big cars and so on. “I still believe that taking individual responsibility for doing my bit to shoulder the load is the right thing to do”, he wrote. And he challenged us: “do we still believe the same goes for our national responsibility to make the world a safer and more stable place?”

Moreover, as part of valuing our relationships with each other, we need to recognise the role of government as an agent for the common good, and particularly see its role to protect and promote interests of the disadvantaged and the vulnerable, both in Canada and around the world, now and into the future.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the                                            University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy