• (Published as “We need to get our ecological footprint down to one planet”)

Over two-thirds of our food footprint is attributable to animal-based foods, which are much more energy and land-intensive

Dr. Trevor Hancock

31 October 2023

702 words

As I reported last week, CHRM Consulting has just completed an updated report on the ecological footprint of Saanich, which is available on the District of Saanich website. The report found Saanich’s footprint was equivalent to four planets’ worth of biocapacity each year, meaning we require four times more biologically productive land and water area than is available to us on a fair global basis.

Of that, almost half (46 percent) results from “senior government impacts”, including “infrastructure and services provided to citizens that are not captured at the local level”. We pay for them through our federal and provincial taxes, so they are not included in the consumption data used in the ecoCity Footprint Tool to calculate the local footprint.

The remaining 54 percent consists of the footprint associated with food (24 percent), transportation (17 percent), buildings (7 percent) and consumables and waste (6 percent). The report provides considerable detail on what makes up each component of the footprint, and what can be done to reduce our footprint, with the aim of getting to a One Planet footprint as soon as possible.

Our food consumption (and waste) is the largest component outside of senior government impacts. Since local data on food consumption was not available – it would need a special survey – national averages were used instead. Thus this report tells us about what our impact is and what would need to happen nationally, and presumably, for the most part, locally.

First, food accounts for 20 percent of what is known as our consumption-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; that is, emissions anywhere in the world associated with the production, processing and distribution of the food we consume in Canada. Of that, only 9 percent of the emissions come from the transportation of food, meaning we need to focus mainly on what we eat, rather than where it comes from.

This is in fact an underestimate, as the way the footprint is calculated does not include methane, and we know farming is a major source of methane. The UN Environment Programmme reports agriculture accounts for about 40 percent of all human-linked methane emissions, mainly from livestock (manure and animal emissions – cow farts, to put it simply) but also from rice paddies. Moreover, because methane is a more potent GHG than CO₂ and only remains in the atmosphere for a decade or so, an increase or reduction in methane can have quite a rapid impact on global warming over the short term.

Overall, the footprint of our food consumption alone is equivalent to one planet, in part because of the amount of land needed to produce our food. As a recent article in Anthropocene Magazine noted, “Planet Earth is basically a farm . . . over half of all habitable land is used for agriculture.” More than half of the food footprint (54 percent) is due to our consumption of meat, fish and eggs, with a further 15 percent due to dairy consumption, meaning over two-thirds (69 percent) is attributable to animal-based foods, which are much more energy and land-intensive.

Moreover, the report notes, “In Canada, about half the food we produce is wasted”, with a significant part of that waste occurring in the supply chain. So not surprisingly, the report suggests: “We can achieve dramatic reduction in our footprint and emissions if we prioritize reducing food waste across the supply chain and also shift to low carbon food choices.”

But reducing the ecological footprint of our agrifood system is not simply a matter of changing what we eat and wasting less food. There are implications for the entire system of agriculture, as a recent article in PLOS Climate showed. The international team of researchers used a global food system model to examine how the agrifood system could actually remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. They conclude that while low-meat ‘flexitarian’ diets can contribute, the largest impacts will come from “hydrogen-powered fertilizer production, livestock feeds, organic and inorganic soil amendments, agroforestry, and sustainable seafood harvesting practices”, all of which we could and should do locally.

Next week I will look at what the report says about transportation, buildings, and consumables and waste, and what else it will take to get to a One Planet Saanich.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

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

Some nations use nowhere near their fair share of the Earth’s biocapacity and resources, while others — such as Canada, with its nearly five-planet footprint — have far more

Dr. Trevor Hancock

23 October 2023

700 words

The concept of a One Planet region is very simple; we only have one planet, and thus need to live within its limits. That should have been been obvious all along, but never more so than since 1972, when two key books – ‘Only One Earth’ and ‘The Limits to Growth’ – were published for the First UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm.

Back then, according to the Global Footprint Network, our collective global ecological footprint – the ecological assets that the world’s population requires to produce the natural resources it consumes and to absorb its waste, especially carbon emissions – was equivalent to just over one planet’s worth of annual biocapacity; today it is 1.75 planets.

But in utilising 1.75 planets’ worth of biocapacity we are “drawing down the resources of the planet faster than they can be regenerated”, as the Saanich report (see below) neatly puts it. As a result we have – not surprisingly – crossed six of the nine planetary boundaries for key natural systems that support life on Earth, and we are approaching two more.

Moreover, our overall global footprint hides inequalities. Some nations use nowhere near their fair share of the Earth’s biocapacity and resources, making it hard if not impossible to meet the basic needs of their citizens, while others – such as Canada, with its nearly 5-planets footprint – have far more.

But think for a moment about the implications of being a five-planet country. First, if the whole world lived the way we do, we would need four more planets. Second, if we continue to utilise five planet’s worth of biocapacity, we are in effect making it impossible for those who have less to get the biocapacity and resources they need in order to live lives of decent quality.

Third, reducing our footprint to one planet’s worth of biocapacity means an 80 percent reduction in our footprint. Happily, since over 60 percent of our footprint is our carbon footprint, getting to net-zero carbon emissions gets us a long way there. (However, we would still have a significant carbon footprint, since net-zero is not zero; it means we emit as much carbon as the Earth (or our technology) can re-absorb.)

I noted last week that the District of Saanich recently released the report by CHRM Consulting on Saanich’s ecological and carbon footprints in 2021. Saanich’s ecological footprint, which is probably representative of the Greater Victoria region as a whole, was equivalent to four planets. While this is a bit better than Canada’s five planets footprint, we’re still a long way from being a One Planet region, needing a 75 percent reduction in our footprint.

What the Saanich report shows us, in some detail, is what makes up our four-planet footprint, and what we need to do to reduce it. Unlike the top-down method used to calculate national footprints, the Saanich report uses the ecoCity Footprint Tool developed by Dr. Jennie Moore at the BC Institute of Technology in Vancouver. It uses local consumption-based data, where it is available, with national or provincial data extrapolated to the local level where needed.

Its advantage is that it “is aligned with the typical spheres, or categories, of municipal planning – buildings, transportation, waste and water” as well as food. The local footprint includes all the materials we use, the energy ‘embodied’, or used, in making those materials and the products we use, the energy we use to operate the various systems in our community (heating and ventilation, transportation and so on) and the built area we occupy or use. 

One of the most interesting findings is that 46 percent of the total ecological footprint for Saanich results from “senior government impacts”. These include “infrastructure and services provided to citizens that are not captured at the local level such as highways, military, health care, coast guard, administrative, etc.” that we pay through our federal and provincial taxes, so are not included in consumption data.

The remaining 54 percent consists of the footprint associated with food (24 percent), transportation (17 percent), buildings (7 percent) and consumables and waste (6 percent). Many of these components of the footprint can be influenced by local action, which is what I will look at next week.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

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 “We need to get our ecological footprint down to one planet”

Canada’s ecological footprint, at around five planets, is one of the highest in the world.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

17 October 2023

702 words

The name of the small NGO that I founded and chair says it all: Conversations for a One Planet Region. We began in 2017 as a series of discussions about the idea of a One Planet Region – a Region with an ecological footprint equivalent to one planet’s worth of biocapacity. Our mission is very simple: To establish and maintain community-wide conversations on One Planet living and a One Planet Region.

But the reality is that our collective global ecological footprint is 1.75 planets. Moreover, in exceeding the Earth’s limits we have crossed six of the nine planetary boundaries for key natural systems that support life on Earth, and we are approaching two more.

Of course, high-income countries have higher footprints; Canada’s, at around 5 planets, is one of the highest footprints in the world. Which means that if the whole world lived the way we do, we would need four more planets – good luck with that! Reducing our footprint to one planet’s worth of biocapacity means an 80 percent reduction in our footprint; since over 60 percent of our total is our carbon footprint, the importance of the clean, green energy transition is obvious.

The ecological footprint can also be calculated locally, and as luck would have it, CHRM Consulting has just updated the 2015 report on Saanich’s ecological footprint for the District of Saanich; it is available on the District’s website.

Overall, Saanich’s ecological footprint in 2021 – which is probably representative of the Greater Victoria region as a whole – was equivalent to 4 planets, meaning the challenge of becoming a One Planet Region is a bit easier than the national challenge.  (This is probably because we have a milder climate and very little of our electricity is generated by fossil-fuels.)

But nonetheless, it still means we need a 75 percent reduction in our ecological footprint, and in a future column I will dive more deeply into this report and its implications. But for now, I want to discuss the links between a One Planet approach and bioregionalism, because it seems to me that we need to ground our One Planet work in local reality, a reality that fuses both the natural and the social worlds, and this is what bioregionalism offers.

A bioregional approach is intended to link us to the place we live and the local and global natural systems that keep us alive. In his 1985 book ‘Dwellers in the Land’, Kirkpatrick Sale suggests four reasons for such an approach (as summarized in a 2018 article by Daniel Wahl, one of the current champions of bioregionalism). First, it operates at a more human scale, where “the forces of government and society are still recognizable and comprehensible, where relations with others are still intimate, and where the effects of individual actions are visible.”

Second, it calls for a very different economy, one that “would seek first to maintain rather than use up the natural world, to adapt to the environment rather than try to exploit or manipulate it, to conserve not only the resources but also the relationships and systems of the natural world.” This is the sort of economy envisaged by Herman Daly as a steady state economy, or by Kate Raworth as a Doughnut economy.

Third, this would be a society based on a ‘bottom-up’ politics, with “all authority flowing upward incrementally from the smallest political unit to the largest” so that “nothing [is] done at a higher level than necessary”; the EU calls this the principle of subsidiarity. Finally, it is a society that is symbiotic – that is, characterised by a close, cooperative, or interdependent relationship (Merriam Webster Dictionary), “where families operate within neighbourhoods, neighbourhoods within communities, communities within cities, cities within regions, all on the basis of collaboration and exchange, cooperation and mutual benefit.”

If you want to learn more about bioregionalism, what it means for this region and how it connects to a One Planet region, come to lecture theatre C-103 of the David Strong Building at UVIc on Tuesday October 24th, 7.30 – 9 PM, where Joe Brewer – whom I wrote about last week – and a panel of local leaders will discuss a bioregional approach to the future of our shared region.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

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

How do we evolve to a culture that is fit for purpose in the 21st century, faced with the realities of ecological limits and social inequity?

Dr. Trevor Hancock

10 October 2023

701 words

I first came across Joe Brewer’s work some years ago in an article he wrote critiquing the failure of universities to address in a comprehensive manner the complex ecological, social and cultural challenges we face. He began his 2017 article “Why Are Universities Failing Humanity?” with this statement: “Humanity is going through the most turbulent and complex change — at planetary scales — that it has ever gone through and there is literally no PhD program on Earth dedicated to preparing scholars to address this situation.”

What was lacking, he argued, is “a fully integrative approach to the coupling of human and ecological systems capable of designing and implementing policy solutions at the appropriate scale to avoid planetary-scale systemic collapse.” Not finding the approach he sought in universities because “my work required a merging of physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities that was nowhere in existence at the time”, he quit his doctoral program and resolved to create what was needed himself.

His thinking very much reflected my own concerns at the time, as I neared retirement after a brief 7-year appointment at UVic and a lifetime as a practitioner and activist. While at UVic I had co-established ‘UVic in the Anthropocene’ as a vehicle to discuss the role of the university in addressing these massive global challenges, and ‘Conversations for a One Planet Region’ (Conversations) as a way of engaging people in discussing the implications of these challenges locally.  Together, these two groups were pleased to welcome Joe to Victoria in November 2019 to talk about his ideas; some of you may have heard him speak at Camosun College.

But Joe has something bigger in mind than changing the work of universities, important though that is: His goal is nothing less than cultural evolution. He was a co-founder of the Cultural Evolution Society and Executive Director of the Center for Applied Cultural Evolution, which defines cultural evolution as simply the extension of Darwin’s concept of evolution “to the domains of social behaviors, practices, tools, and structures”. So how do we evolve to a culture that is fit for purpose in the 21^st century, faced with the realities of ecological limits and social inequity?

We see the work of the Conversations as largely about cultural evolution at a local level, focused on how we shift the core values underlying our culture, something I wrote about two weeks ago. But as I wrote last week, that global-level thinking has to be applied locally. This is an issue that Joe talked about in 2019, since when he has written a book, ‘The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth’, that is focused on bioregionalism.

The principal goal of Earth regeneration, he writes, is to bring us back within the nine planetary boundaries (six of which, as I noted recently, we have exceeded); it is, in other words, a vision of a ‘One Planet’ society or community. But to achieve that, he writes, we must “organize our efforts around the functional landscapes of real-world ecosystems to achieve the emergent capacities of sustainability at territorial scales.”

To bring that to a planetary scale, he suggests, requires a global network of regenerative bioregions; in other words, it has to be a bottom-up rather than a top-down process. The practical implications include the holistic management of landscapes, the creation of regenerative (rather than exploitative and extractive) economies, and “prosocial communities of people” capable of working effectively together; it also requires an appreciation of the knowledge and experience of Indigenous people, whose way of life was largely ordered around watersheds and other natural systems.

So we are pleased to welcome Joe back to Victoria October 21 – 24. He is currently on a Bioregional Activation Tour of the Cascadia region, coordinated by Regenerate Cascadia. While here he will be meeting with faith communities, local environmental organisations, municipal and business leaders, Indigenous people and high school students.

There will be one free public event, on Tuesday October 24th, 7.30 – 9 PM, in lecture theatre C-103 of the David Strong Building at UVIc. Joe and a panel of local leaders will discuss a bioregional approach to the future of our shared region. More details can be found at http://www.oneplanetconversations.ca; I hope you can make it.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

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 learn how to live well together in this place that we share, not just with humans but with many other species, and how to do so within the ecological and biophysical constraints of this region.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

3 October 2023

699 words

I have spent the last couple of months exploring the global polycrisis and the set of responses – great turnarounds – proposed in the Earth For All report. But what, you might reasonably ask, does this all mean for us here in the Greater Victoria Region? How can its concepts be translated into local action?

One approach, framed and informed by global and local ecological reality, is called bioregionalism. As originally conceived by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 1973, a bioregion was purely an ecological concept, part of a nested set of bio-geographic regions that go from the global to the local. According to One Earth’s ‘Bioregions 2020’ website, there are 185 discrete bioregions, which in turn contain 844 terrestrial ecoregion divisions; the bioregions are themselves located within 52 sub-realms of the world’s eight major biogeographical realms.

Here on southern Vancouver Island, we are part of the Puget Lowland Forests ecoregion, which surrounds the Salish Sea and includes Vancouver and Seattle. Our ecoregion is nested within the Pacific Northwest Coastal Forests Bioregion, which runs from the Santa Cruz Mountains in California to Graham Island in British Columbia. It includes Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii and adjacent marine areas, and comprises a large part of what some call Cascadia.

But while useful to ecologists, the concept of a bioregion was made more useful to communities in a famous 1977 essay by Peter Berg, a San Francisco-based environmental writer, and Raymond Dasmann, chief ecologist at the IUCN. They expanded the concept to include humans, human culture and activity, defining a bioregion as “geographical terrain and a terrain of consciousness . . . a place and the ideas that have developed about how to live in that place.”

This biocultural model, they proposed, should be used to “establish an ecologically and socially sustainable pattern of existence” within a given place. Those places, they suggested, should largely be based upon watersheds, “the drainage systems [that] help to define and tie together the life of the bioregion”, although they caution that “the final boundaries of a bioregion are best described by the people who have lived within it.”

Writing as they were in a North American context – Berg’s focus was the Northern California bioregion where he lived – they paid attention to the Indigenous ways of knowing about and living within the bioregion before European settlement. They emphasised ‘living-in-place’, the need to understand the ecology, history and culture of the land and its peoples, wryly observing “We know more about property lines than we do about the life that moves under, over, and through them.”  

Technically, the greater Victoria Region is not a bioregion in the ecological sense. But a bioregional approach to managing this place where we live would be useful, and indeed may be essential. As the global ecological and social challenges mount, as the polycrisis deepens, we need to learn how to live well together in this place that we share, not just with humans but with many other species, and how to do so within the ecological and biophysical constraints of this region.

The biocultural model of bioregionalism has been widely taken up, including locally. The One Planet Saanich initiative was instigated as part of a global project by a UK-based group called Bioregional, while the Saanich Peninsula Environmental Coalition has created a Bioregional Framework that has now been adopted by all three municipalities in the Saanich Peninsula: Central and North Saanich and Sidney.

At a larger scale, a group called Regenerate Cascadia is working to activate local groups in the interest of “the long term stewardship of the Cascadia Bioregion.” (One of the two primary conveners of Regenerate Cascadia is Clare Attwell, a local fabric artist and activist, and a member of the Board of Conversations for a One Planet Region, of which I am President.)

Together, we are helping to organise a Cascadia Bioregional Activation Tour by Joe Brewer, one of the current champions of bioregionalism and author of ‘The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth’. Joe will be visiting Victoria in October, including participating in a public forum at UVic the evening of October 24^th – mark your calendars, more on his work next week.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

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

New ethical frameworks for society are needed that reflect values of human solidarity, quality of life and ecological sensibility

Dr. Trevor Hancock

26 September 2023

701 words

In recent weeks I have been exploring Earth For All, the 2022 report of the 21^st Century Transformational Economics Commission to the Club of Rome. Intended as ‘A Survival Guide for Humanity’, the report focuses on five great turnarounds, each of which I have discussed.

There is in effect a sixth great turnaround in the report, one that underlies the other five; the need for a transformation in our economic system, which I wrote about last week. But although not explicitly discussed in the report, I detect a seventh – and perhaps the most profound – turnaround underlying all these; a turnaround in the deep cultural values that drive our society and its economy.

In his 2017 book ‘The Patterning Instinct’, Jeremy Lent call these deep cultural values ‘root metaphors’: “Each culture”, he wrote in a 2018 blog for Schumacher College, “tends to construct its worldview on a root metaphor of the universe, which in turn defines people’s relationship to nature and each other, ultimately leading to a set of values that directs how that culture behaves.”

I have addressed this before. Back in November 2020 I wrote about the toxic values we need to change, including the excessive valuing of individualism; greed and materialism, and seeing nature as apart from us rather than something in which we are deeply embedded and upon which we are completely dependent.

Those thoughts align well with “the conventional triad of individualism, consumerism, and domination of nature” identified by the Great Transition Initiative (GTI, see below) as lying at the root of our current global and local crises. In opposition to them, the GTI proposes we develop “a constellation of values – human solidarity, quality of life, and ecological sensibility.”

The GTI, which like Earth For All is focused on a deep transformation of culture and society, is rooted in the Global Scenario Group, founded in 1995. It is “an international collaboration for charting pathways to a planetary civilization rooted in solidarity, sustainability, and human well-being.” And it has a strong interest in ethics.

In February 2020 the GTI organised an online Forum titled ‘Toward a Great Ethics Transition’. In an opening essay, Professor Brendan Mackey, Director of the Climate Change Response Program at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, wrote: “systemic transformation will require a roadmap guided by shared values about what we want the future to look like and an agreed set of normative ethical principles to provide the necessary moral guidance.”

In particular he noted “we will not have the ‘green economy’ we need without a new economic vision and the institutional means to regulate private abuse of the global commons and goods held in common”, adding in a subsequent commentary, responding to a number of thoughtful responses to his essay, that “Humanity’s future and survival is very much tied to the health of our planet. And for this reason, I argue the Great Transition needs an ethic which is an Earth ethic.”

Mackey suggests that the Earth Charter, launched in 2000 after a 5-year-long consultation process headed by Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev, is a useful example of a global ethical framework for governance, although it needs updating. In particular he notes its section on ecological integrity needs to address modern-day issues such as the Anthropocene and planetary boundaries, while he comments approvingly on the growing “influence of First Nations’ worldviews, values, and principles in national and international policy and law.”

Mackey also points to “the importance that world religions and religious leaders have to play in the ongoing development and application of Earth ethics.” So I was pleased to be invited with my colleague Clare Attwell to speak recently to the Interfaith Liaison Network of the Victoria Multifaith Society about bioregionalism and the importance of becoming a One Planet Region.

I am convinced of the importance of faith communities in exploring and discussing new ethical frameworks for society that reflect the constellation of values – human solidarity, quality of life, and ecological sensibility – championed by the Great Transition Initiative. We need conversations throughout this region, across BC and Canada about these ideas. Such work is essential if we are to achieve the great turnaround in societal values we need, locally and globally.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

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 “The economy must serve the people and respect the Earth’s limits”)

Scientists who examined nine key Earth systems concluded “six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity.”

Dr. Trevor Hancock

19 September 2023

700 words

‘Earth For All’ is the title of a September 2022 report from theTransformational Economics Commission to the Club of Rome. It is also “an international initiative to accelerate the systems-change we need for an equitable future on a finite planet”. Given its roots in an economic analysis, it unsurprisingly focuses on the economy, calling for “an upgraded economic system”, because “the dominant economic model is destabilising societies. And the planet.”

The urgency of this economic transformation is highlighted by two articles published this month. First, in an article published in Science Advances, Dr. Katherine Richardson and her colleagues have done the first comprehensive review of all the planetary boundaries that were first proposed in 2009. They examined nine key Earth systems and concluded “six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity.”

In addition, they noted, we are close to breaching the boundary for ocean acidification, and already cross the boundary in some regions for air pollution. Moreover, they added, “The transgression level has increased for all boundaries earlier identified as overstepped.”

The only boundary we do not transgress is for the ‘hole’ in the ozone layer. There, things are slowly improving, thanks to strong and rapid international action within two years of when the problem was identified in 1985 – which only goes to show that we can make positive change when we put our minds to it.

The second article, in Lancet Planetary Health, looked at 11 high-income countries (of which Canada is one) that succeeded in reducing their CO2 emissions while growing their GDP – a situation known as ‘decoupling’ emissions from GDP growth. While on the face of it that seems a good thing, Jefim Vogel and Jason Hickel foundthat in reality the rates of emission reductions fall far short of their legally binding CO2 emission reduction commitments under the 2015 Paris Accord.

On average, they said, at that rate it will take more than 220 years for those countries to get their emissions down to an acceptable level. Meanwhile, they found, they would emit 27 times their fair share of the planet’s remaining carbon budget. If high-income countries are to achieve the needed emissions reductions, they concluded, “A crucial step is to stop the pursuit of aggregate economic growth and instead pursue post-growth approaches oriented towards sufficiency, equity, and wellbeing.”

That, in essence, is also the central message of a May 2023 report from the World Health Organization’s Council on the Economics of Health for All. Their central premise is that “Alongside a healthy and sustainable environment, human health and wellbeing must be the ultimate goal of economic activity.”

The Earth For All report reflects the same concerns.  It suggests “we should be largely agnostic about growth- it depends on what is growing.” So ‘yes’ to growth in wellbeing, but ‘no’ to growth in material footprints, which need to shrink. The report takes aim at the ‘winner takes all’ economy and instead proposes “a commons-based wellbeing economy”.

They propose three big changes: “A Citizens Fund to distribute universal basic dividends generated from fees on wealth extraction” (Alaska’s Permanent Fund provides a model), “regulating finance to invest in strategies that address inequality, climate change and other crises” and cancelling unfair international debt.

Call it what you will – a Wellbeing economy, a Doughnut economy, a steady-state economy, de-growth – there is a growing awareness that our current economic system is broken, and cannot be fixed in a way that enables ‘business as usual’ to continue. In fact business as usual leads inexorably to growing disruption of the Earth’s natural systems, growing inequality, and all the instability and societal breakdown that can result from those conditions. 

When it comes to understanding the economy in relationship to our society and the planet, the World Wide Fund for Nature said it simply and well in its 2014 ‘Living Planet’ report: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work the other way round”. The economic transformation we need begins with that simple understanding, a recognition that the economy must serve the people and respect the bio-physical limits of the Earth. To act otherwise is, in the end, suicidal.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

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 “If we want energy for all, we need to stop wasting it”)

A 2018 study found global energy demand by 2050 could be 40 per cent lower than now if all known energy efficiencies were implemented

Dr. Trevor Hancock

12 September 2023

699 words

The fifth great turnaround proposed by the Earth For All (E4A) initiative of the Club of Rome is a complete restructuring of our energy system. But it’s more than that, since energy is so bound up in all we do. Energy has powered our civilization ever since we first learned to use fire to warm us, cook and scare off predators.

As we moved through the ages of wood, coal, oil, gas and nuclear we accumulated more and more ‘energy servants’. Today, by one estimate, every American has at their command the equivalent of roughly 150 servants working 24/7 every day of the year, and that does not seem to include the energy used outside America making all the stuff that is acquired.

So transforming our energy system also means transforming our way of life, our societies and our economies. In their chapter on The Energy Turnaround, E4A’s authors discuss among other things “a shift to more conscious production, and to consuming less”, as well as the need for a circular economy and manufacturing practices to both recycle materials and use less materials in products.

At the heart of their proposed strategy lies greater energy and resource efficiency.  As is the case with food, as I noted last week, we waste a lot of energy. Earth For All cites a 2018 study in Nature Energy by Arnulf Grubler and colleagues that found global energy demand by 2050 could be 40 percent lower than now if all known energy efficiencies were implemented, in spite of population increases and rising affluence.

Greater efficiencies stem from improving our buildings and changing our transportation systems, E4A stresses. Improved insulation is “a better solution than adding air conditioning or heaters”, daylighting buildings is better than using lights, refurbishing is better than demolishing buildings. We also need to redesign our cities for walkability and livability, aiming for denser development, public transportation and “smaller vehicles, and fewer vehicles on the roads.”

Those vehicles should be electric, as should pretty much everything else. Indeed “electrify (almost) everything” is their second proposed solution: “we should substitute carbon molecules with electrons wherever something needs energy.”

They address a number of myths put forward mainly by the fossil fuel industry and their allies: No, energy transitions are not slow, and we are midway through this transition, at the point where renewable energy is as cheap as fossil fuels, or cheaper, in many places. No, many sectors are not hard to electrify, the technologies to do so exist. No, it is not difficult to change people’s behavior, and no, clean energy is not intermittent and unreliable, if proper planning is done.

In fact, “the solutions are market-ready”, although we do need to ensure that the new minerals mining that is needed does not exploit poor nations or vulnerable people, and does not create land degradation and pollution. Part of that mitigation, of course, is that greater efficiency reduces demand and its accompanying harms.

Earth For All’s third proposed solution is an exponential growth in new renewables. Wind and solar, they point out, doubled from 5 percent of all global electricity production in 2016 to 10 percent in 2021. At that rate, they note, these technologies could supply half of all electricity in the early 2030s, especially as costs decline about 20-25 percent for each doubling of installed capacity.

Another energy source to consider is ultradeep geothermal energy, which has caught the attention of Thomas Homer-Dixon and his colleagues at the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. This involves creating heat-exchange reservoirs in hot, dry rock more than 5 kilometres below Earth’s surface. These geothermal power plants, they write, “could be built nearly anywhere on Earth and provide an essentially limitless supply of net-zero power.” By pioneering this approach, they suggest, Canada could become a deep geothermal superpower.

Not only will these changes help us avoid the worst of climate change, they will also result in cleaner air and better health, especially in low and middle-income countries, who will need both techological and financial support to make these changes. But as the countries with the highest carbon footprints, high-income countries such as Canada need to lead the way towards energy for all.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

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 “We need to change the way we farm — and eat”)

A more plant-based, low-meat diet has many health and ecological benefits, including requiring less land per person, so it can be farmed more sustainably.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

4 September 2023

701 words

The first three of the five ‘great turnarounds’ in the Club of Rome’s ‘Earth for All’ report are concerned with addressing different aspects of inequality. But the final two, to which I now turn, are concerned with two of the most fundamental determinants of our health; food and – next week – energy.

The Earth For All report notes: “The way we farm, transport and consume food affects more planetary boundaries than anything else.” They go on to list these impacts, which include climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss – including widespread depletion of fish stocks, massive use of freshwater, and pollution from fertilisers, pesticides and animal wastes.

Those ecological changes cut both ways, with the effects of climate change – high temperatures, droughts and floods – threatening agriculture in many parts of the world. The risk of ‘breadbasket failures’ are real and growing.

Indeed, the lead author of a recent article in Nature Communication, titled “Risks of synchronized low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections” told AFP that the study should be a “a wake-up call in terms of our uncertainties.”

But climate and other ecological changes are not the only factors threatening the stability and resilience of what is, in fact, a rather fragile global food system. The system depends upon a relatively small number of countries and staple products, many grown as monocultures with little genetic variety, while an unhealthy and environmentally harmful Western diet is pushed by narrow commercial interests.

As we have seen in Ukraine, a relatively small local war can affect food availability and prices around the world, especially in many vulnerable low-income countries, potentially triggering social unrest and mass migration, and threatening democracy. 

“We face a triple challenge in agriculture”, the Earth For All report concludes: “Produce more healthy food, without destroying the planet, while building resilient production systems that are able to withstand rising shocks.” And the report goes on to suggest three solutions.

The first is to revolutionize the way we farm. Given that we already use half of all land for agriculture and other purposes, this starts with not expanding the conversion of forests and other natural lands to agriculture. In fact we need to grow more food on less land, while restoring natural systems.

Farmlands must become carbon sinks, not carbon emitters, they must enhance not erode biodiversity and they must restore the health of the soil. This is an approach known as regenerative agriculture. It must be complemented by advanced technologies for managing agriculture efficiently, including ‘vertical farming’ in cities.

The second solution is to change our diets. The Western diet, marketed around the world, is bad for health and for the planet. A more plant-based, low-meat diet – such as the new Canada Food Guide proposes – has many health and ecological benefits. In particular it requires less land per person, which reduces the pressure on land, allowing it to be farmed more sustainably. 

Finally, we need to eliminate food loss and waste, which can also reduce the pressure on land. The FAO estimates that globally about one third of food is lost or wasted. In high-income countries we over-consume and portion size is too large, fueling obesity, and we discard too much edible food because it is blemished. In low-income countries, better storage, refrigeration and transportation is needed to reduce losses.

Here on Vancouver Island, most of our food is imported, and we have only enough food land to supply about 10 percent of our needs, according to Professor Rick Kool at Royal Roads University, although that could be more with a low-meat diet. The good news is that increasing the uptake of regenerative practices is one of the objectives of BC’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food, while the Sundown Centre in North Saanich provides a hub for regenerative agricultural practices in the region.

In addition, The City of Victoria is a founding partner in the ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign, a national program to reduce food waste in Canada. The City is also home to the Zero Waste Emporium, Vancouver Island’s first Zero Waste grocery store. But the big challenge is changing our diets and changing our over-consumption practices; we still have a long way to go!

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

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 are far from gender equality globally, and still have some way to go in Canada

Dr. Trevor Hancock

29 August 2023

701 words

Last week I discussed the need for a reduction in inequality within nations as the second of five ‘great turnarounds’ proposed in the Earth For All report. The third turnaround needed to ensure a socially just transformation is the empowerment of women and the achievement of gender equity.

The report’s authors stress the need for improvement in “women’s access to education, economic opportunities and dignified jobs, and all life’s chances that these bring.” The education and empowerment of women and their involvement in the economy, they note, is strongly linked to reduced fertility rates and a reduction in population size.

This point was emphasized by Per Espen Stoknes, Earth For All project lead and director of the Centre for Sustainability at the Norwegian Business School. It is the main factor behind their prediction that the population would peak at 8.6 billion in 2050 (we just passed 8 billion) before declining to 7 billion in 2100.

Gender equality is the fifth of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed upon by all the nations of the world, including Canada, in 2015. There are six outcome targets under this Goal, including ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls; ending violence and exploitation of women and girls; eliminating harmful practices such as child early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation, and ensuring access to universal reproductive rights and health.

The latest report on Goal 5 from UN Women, the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, was in 2022. It found “the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030”. Indeed, at the current rate of change, the report noted, “it may take another 286 years to remove discriminatory laws and close prevailing gaps in legal protections for women and girls.”

The report highlights the importance of educating girls and young women, noting it is “integral to virtually every aspect of development, including economic growth and prosperity.” These benefits, decades of research has shown, include “faster poverty reduction, better maternal health, lower child mortality, greater HIV prevention and reduced violence against women.”

A fact sheet in the report highlights that violence against women and girls remains commonplace. Shockingly, globally, one woman or girl is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, while globally, one in eight women and girlsaged 15-49 was subjected to sexual and/or physical violence by an intimate partner in the previous year.

Clearly there is a long way to go in achieving gender equality in many parts of the world, as highlighted by recent events in Afghanistan, in which women are denied education and employment, or in Iran, where there are many restrictions on women; similar restrictions are seen in many other parts of the world,

Here in Canada, not only is gender equality a fundamental human right, the Government of Canada states, it is “a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.” As part of its commitment, in 2019, the government established a Ministry of Women and Gender Equality.

Canada’s aims, according to the federal government, are to eliminate gender-based violence and harassment, support gender equality in leadership roles and at all levels of decision-making and ensure that Canadians, and those who live here, share responsibilities within households and families.

The Government of Canada introduced the Gender Results Framework in 2018 to provide data on gender equality within 6 main areas: education and skills development; economic participation and prosperity; leadership and democratic participation; gender-based violence and access to justice; poverty reduction, health and well-being; and gender equality around the world.

Regrettably, however, while there is lots of data in extensive tables, it is not user-friendly and I could not find a useful summary or compilation on their website, nor could I find an annual report. However, the Canadian Women’s Foundation notes that women working full-time and part-time make 89 cents for every dollar men make, that women, especially single mothers are more likely to live in low-income households than men, and that one in ten women are concerned about the possibility of violence in the home.

Clearly, we are far from gender equality globally, and still have some way to go in Canada.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

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