Dr. Trevor Hancock – Healthy people, healthy communities, a healthy planet

Dr. Trevor Hancock

18 October 2022

700 words

Way back in 1977, the World Health Organization declared the goal of achieving Health For All by the Year 2000. This should be understood in the way the US Public Health Service defined a goal in 1980: “a timeless statement of aspiration”. Clearly Health For All was not achieved, and is still not achieved today. But nonetheless the idea – indeed, the ideal – is important, and it inspired many people, including me.

What is particularly noteworthy is the focus on ‘all’. In my presentations, I always point out it is not health for a few, not just for some, not even for many, but for all. It stems from a deeply humane concern to include everyone, to ensure everyone in the world enjoys good health.

But the ultimate determinant of the health of everyone in the world is the state of the natural ecosystems of which we are a part, coupled with the extent to which the Earth’s natural resources and biocapacity are fairly distributed within and between societies. Which brings me to ‘Earth For All’, a report to the Club of Rome that I mentioned in my August 28^th column and is now published.

The report comes 50 years after the Club of Rome released ‘The Limits to Growth’, a ground-breaking and controversial exploration of the future of humanity and the Earth. That 1972 report used a ‘world systems model’ to explore several alternative development scenarios. It found that ‘business as usual’ (BAU) led to ecological overshoot and societal collapse in the mid-21^st century – now 30 years away. It also found plausible alternative development paths that could avoid collapse – but regrettably, we did not take them then, and are not taking them now.

‘Earth For All’ builds on the ‘Limits to Growth’, using an updated model to revisit the different scenarios. In addition to BAU, the report examines two alternatives to BAU, one of which assumes twice as much resources are found and used as in the original scenario, while the third assumes a dramatic increase in technology. A fourth scenario was a route to a stabilised world through large scale societal change.

One of the researchers, Gaya Herrington, looked at how the actual data over the past 40 years for the main elements of the model compared to the trends in the scenarios. She found that “the first three scenarios most accurately tracked the actual data”, which, the authors note, “should set off alarm bells.”

Both BAU and BAU with double resources led to societal collapse in the 21^st century, the first because “material consumption crashed up against planetary boundaries”,  the second because with twice as many resources “inefficient overuse continued for longer”, resulting in “the biggest collapse due to excessive pollution.” The ‘high tech’ scenario led to serious declines, but not collapse; only the ‘stabilised world’ scenario led to “widespread increases in human welfare and popualtion stabilization.”

Importantly, in her foreword, Christiana Figueres – a notable global leader on climate change – makes the point that we face a metacrisis that includes “climate chaos, environmental degradation and perverse inequality.” Not only do those crises interact, she writes, they “all share the same deep root: extractivism . . . [that] not only deplete the planet . . . it also depletes our human souls.”

The main focus of the book, however – and the accompanying Earth4All website – is not on the problems, but the solutions. The authors note in their opening chapter that “the long-term potential of humanity depends upon civilization . . . undergoing five extraordinary turnarounds within the coming decades.” And they take an optimistic stance: “Our analysis indicates its fully doable” and “can be achieved by 2050.”

The first three of those turnarounds are focused on inequality, underscoring that it is Earth for Alll, not Earth for a few, some or many: Ending poverty, addressing gross inequality and empowering women. The fourth is to “make our food system healthy for people and ecosystems” and the fifth is to transition to clean energy. I will address these turnarounds in the coming weeks, linking them to local action in this region. Given their importance, they should be a key focus for the new municipal councils we have just elected.

© Trevor Hancock, 2022

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 It’s called outside” in print and “Why we need licensed outdoor childcare” online)

Dr. Trevor Hancock

11 October 2022

700 words

There is an apocryphal story of a mother taking her young daughter out into the backyard. The child looks up from her i-Pad and says “Where are we?” Her mother replies “It’s called outside”.

The point is obvious: We have become so screen-oriented that we – and especially our children – have lost touch with the outdoors, with nature. There is growing concern that this is bad for their health, and a reciprocal concern that it is bad for nature too. After all, if they have had no contact with nature, why would they cherish, respect and protect nature?

So what if you had a childcare program that improved the physical, cognitive and social-emotional development of children, increased their connections to nature and place and had a beneficial effect throughout their lives? Wouldn’t you want it to be made available for your kids and grandkids, and indeed for every child?

That program is nature-based outdoor childcare, and it was the focus of a recent one-day Summit at Royal Roads University, organized by the BC Nature-based Childcare Advisory Committee (the Committee).“The evidence of the benefits of outdoor childcare and education is clear”, said Dr. Enid Elliot, an instructor in early learning at Camosun College and one of the Summit organisers.

That evidence includes studies in a number of countries that have shown benefits such as increased fitness, improved motor skills, improved mental and social wellbeing, more complex and imaginative play, increased environmental knowledge related to place, and connections to nature that persist into adulthood as pro-environmental attitudes.

Moreover, even though many assume outdoor childcare is less safe, experience shows that is not the case. On the contrary, as long as proper safety and risk mitigation strategies are in place, children develop awareness of personal boundaries for safe activity while developing “communities of safety”. In addition, being outdoors means lower rates of disease transmission, including Covid. As Dr. Elliot concluded: “In fact there is a risk to not allowing children to be outside, to not be connected to the land”.

But the problem is that this form of childcare is not licensed in BC. “Right now in BC”, explained Dr. Mariana Brussoni, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC and Director of the Human Early Learning Project, “childcare can only get licensed if it is attached to a building. That means that operators . . . must still find and license a facility, even if they never set foot in it. Or they run an unlicensed childcare centre, with no regulatory oversight.”

As a result, the program – if licensed – is more expensive to run than it should be, which means it is not accessible to low-income families. If it is not licensed, then it cannot access wage enhancement funding from the province and is not eligible for the new $10-a-day childcare support funding. Either way, the children, families and staff lose out.

Outdoor childcare is an efficient way to expand childcare spaces, costing less per space, so society as a whole loses out when it is not widely and equitably available. Which is why the conference organisers and their supporters are pushing to have outdoor childcare licensed in BC.

The good news is that just to the south, the State of Washington has licensed outdoor, nature-based childcare, meaning BC can learn from them. Their program was described to the group at some length by two key members of the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF).

They emphasised that licensing basically follows the same rules as regular childcare, but with additional training for the inspectors on specific additional rules for outdoor nature-based care, which they described in some detail.

An added benefit that is emphasized by both the BC Committee and the DCYF is the chance to connect with and learn from local Indigenous people about their history and their connection to the land. A new BC-based program, Learning Outside Together, developed by the Early Childhood Educators of BC and the BC Aboriginal Child Care Society, provides a useful new way to do this.

To learn more, or to help ensure outdoor, nature-based childcare is available to all, visit https://outsideplay.ca/#/summit or the Facebook page “Spreading Our Branches”.

© Trevor Hancock, 2022

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

Posted out of sequence, as I forgot to post it the previous week

Will they promote walking, biking/rolling and public transportation? Or will they promote further urban sprawl, single-family dwellings and a car-focused transportation system?

Dr. Trevor Hancock

27 September 2022

700 words

The Club of Rome has just published what may be its most consequential report since ‘The Limits to Growth’ in 1972. Fifty years on, they created a stellar panel of Earth scientists, economists, social development experts and activists, to write ‘Earth For All’, sub-titled ‘A Survival Guide for Humanity’. The book and related website and other activities are intended “to help steer humanity away from ecological and social catastrophe”.

“We are in the midst of a planetary crisis of our own making”, they write. I will not repeat here their discussion of the challenges we face; I have discussed them often in these columns, most recently in August, and before that in June. Because what really matters is what we do about the crisis we face.

“The long-term potential of humanity”, the authors state, “depends upon civilization . . . undergoing nothing short of five extraordinary turnarounds within the coming decades”. These are to end poverty, address gross inequality, empower women, make our food system healthy for people and ecosystems, and transition to clean energy. Underpinning them all is a radical transformation of our economy

Moreover, they write, “there is sufficient knowledge, funds and technologies in the world to implement them”. For example, they indicate that it would take an investment of only 2 – 4 percent of global income each year to fund the energy and food system turnarounds. And they believe this is achievable by 2050.

For obvious reasons, their focus is largely on national and global policies; words such as local, municipal or community do not appear in the index. But in the midst of municipal elections, it is important that candidates who want to run our municipalities for the next 4 years think and talk about what local actions are needed to support these transformations. And it is important that voters ask them about these issues and judge them on their understanding and commitment.

So, for example, when candidates talk about securing economic development, ask ‘to do what?’ Will economic growth increase our greenhouse gas emissions, our consumption of resources and our waste emissions? Or will it entail a switch to energy and resource conservation, restoration of our local ecosystems, ecologically sustainable food systems and reductions in waste and pollution? Will it create jobs that provide a living wage, or more part-time, insecure jobs with minimal benefits?

On housing, transportation and urban development, will they prioritise the creation of social housing by providing land and incentives and cutting red tape and support creating an abundance of housing, especially ‘missing middle housing’, in a manner that is human-scale and attractive, while at the same time increasing energy and resource conservation.

Will they promote walking, biking/rolling and public transportation, expand the ‘All Ages and Abilities’ trail network and implement the Victoria Transit Future Plan?  Or will they promote further environmentally damaging urban sprawl, large single-family dwellings and a car-focused transportation system?

On environment and energy, will they follow the lead of Vancouver and ban new fossil fuel hook-ups? Will they develop a regional strategy to shift us to a clean net-zero-carbon energy system ASAP? Will they protect and restore natural areas and promote sustainable, regenerative agriculture? Will they adopt a zero-waste policy, especially for food waste, and oppose landfill expansion?

It should not come as a surprise that these ideas sound like many of the proposals put forward to create ‘One Planet’ communities and to create a more livable Victoria. They too come from an understanding that for the sake of future generations and for people around the world, we have to become a model of how to live well and with justice within the limits of the Earth.

‘Earth for All’ ends with a call to create a social movement rooted in conversations “in every home, every school, every university, every town and city” about these necessary transformations. And they urge the creation at local and national levels of citizens’ assemblies to discuss how to bring about these changes.

So a final question for candidates: Will you support the creation of a regional Citizens’ Assembly to discuss how to create a livable, healthy, just and sustainable community here in the Greater Victoria Region? And if not, why not?

© Trevor Hancock, 2022

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

Dr. Trevor Hancock

3 October  2022

700 words

I began writing this on September 30^th, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day to reflect on the past, present and future of the relationships between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people. One obvious issue to consider in that relationship is the land on which we all live. Indigenous people lived on this land for millennia before Europeans started to settle on Vancouver Island in the 1840s.

Like many others now, when I introduce myself in a meeting I refer to the fact that I live on the traditional and unceded or improperly ceded territories of the Lekwungen speaking people. The extent to which those lands were not in fact ceded (surrendered to Britain) by the local Indigenous people was brought home to me recently by a book entitled ‘To Share not Surrender’.

The book is one product of a 2017 conference organized by the Songhees First Nation and the University of Victoria to consider the so-called Douglas Treaties. These ‘treaties’ form the basis of Indigenous and settler rights to the land in this region and in a couple of other places on Vancouver Island.

The first thing one has to conclude from reading the book – and especially Neil Vallance’s chapter on the making of the Douglas Treaties – is that the ‘treaties’ were in essence fraudulent. There were oral discussions with Chiefs and others for which no formal records were made by the British. They then ‘signed’ a paper with a cross (few if any spoke English or wrote), indicating their agreement; the actual written text was sent later from the Hudson’s Bay Company and their ‘signatures’ attached.

And what did the First Nations agree to? Vallance – who is a retired property lawyer who did his PhD on this subject at UVic – says they were ‘sharing treaties’: “In sum”, he concludes, “First Nations negotiated with James Douglas an agreement to share, not surrender, their land and its resources”.

So what does that mean for those of us who now occupy the lands subject to the Douglas Treaties. After all, we settlers can trace our local roots back, at best, less than 200 years – less than one percent of the time that Indigenous people have been in North America.

More specifically, what does it mean for municipal governments whose main focus is about the management of land, and whose principal source of revenue comes from a tax on land. If the land is, in reality, to be shared, what does that mean in practice? What are the fair and just terms for sharing the land?

I don’t begin to have an answer to those questions, and in any case, clearly, it is something that needs to be decided in negotiations between First Nations and the municipal, provincial and federal governments. But I have given it some thought, assisted by discussions with my colleagues in Livable Victoria, among others. 

It seems to me that one place to start is with a powerful comment in the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “reconciliation will never occur unless we are also reconciled with the earth.” In other words, land use must be compatible with reconciliation with the natural world, as understood by local First Nations. Among other things, surely this means respecting the land, waters, plants and animals and protecting and restoring natural areas.

Second is the issue of returning land. The ‘Land Back’ movement aims “to get Indigenous Lands back into Indigenous hands”. While negotiations have already done that to some extent, surely there is more to be done?

Third, sharing the land must mean shared decision-making. Local First Nations must have voice and power in land use decisions (whether municipal, provincial or federal) made with respect to their traditional territories and based on traditional knowledge.

Finally, rent and compensation: Surely local First Nations are owed rent for the current use of their lands – perhaps through a share of the property tax ? – and compensation for the historical confiscation and use of their lands.

Reconciling land use and development is going to be an issue of growing importance for all the newly elected Councillors in this region – so you may want to ask candidates for their views on these issues.

© Trevor Hancock, 2022

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 “Community safety is about more than police”

Dr. Trevor Hancock

21 September 2022

699 words

It is said that it takes a whole village to raise a child, not just the family and the school. Similarly, the most important message in the decades-old global Healthy Communities movement that I helped to create is that it takes efforts at all levels and across all sectors to create a healthier community. So while the health care sector is obviously needed, it is not the most important contributor to the health of a community.

These lessons apply equally to community safety. While a good police force is necessary, it is not sufficient to create safety; it takes the whole community to do that. And what is true of a healthy community – that it is built one home at a time, one street at a time, one block at a time and one neighbourhood at a time – is equally true for creating a safer community.

 As my last two columns have pointed out, community safety is a complex, indeed a ‘wicked’ problem, requiring a complex, sophisticated, long-term and comprehensive set of approaches. One of the global champions of this approach is Irvin Waller, an Emeritus Professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. Professor Waller has helped shape policy and practice in a number of countries and at the UN, where he is renowned for championing the recognition of the rights of victims.

Above all else, Professor Waller emphasizes the science of community safety and crime and violence prevention. In blogging about his 2019 book, “Science and Secrets for Ending Violent Crime”, Waller has said “Study after study confirms that smart investments in preventing violence before it happens are more effective and cost effective than the status quo of police and prisons.”

Moreover, he adds, “Investing in effective violence prevention is more affordable and successful than policymakers think; a modest equivalent of 10 percent of what they spend on police, courts, and corrections will do it and often before the next election!”  

He emphasises not only being tough on crime but ‘tough on causes’: A 2021 Policy Brief he co-authored for the Canadian Municipal Network on Crime Prevention (CMNCP) notes “Solid prevention science identifies actions where violent crime has been reduced by 50% better than the status quo”. Scientifically proven prevention programs noted in the brief include engaging and supporting young males, supporting positive parenting and early childhood, strengthening anti-violence social norms, mitigating financial stress and improving the physical environment.

His work has greatly influenced work of the CMNCP, which was founded in 2006. The Network provides ready access to international and national evidence-based crime prevention programs and practices, mentorship, and support from community safety specialists and peer practitioners, as well as workshops and training. 

Regrettably, not a single municipality in the Capital Region is a member of this network, even though membership fees for all of them except Saanich are under $1,000 ($1,100 for Saanich). So protestations that municipal councils here are concerned with community safety and crime prevention are not matched by their actions.

One of the key steps emphasized both by Waller and the CMNCP is to create a ‘responsibility centre’ – some form of permanent community safety and crime prevention council, which in our case should be regional. It would bring together key players and stakeholders from across the region, including of course the police, but also schools, social agencies, businesses, community members and municipal governments. Together they would create a community safety and crime prevention plan and engage the whole community in that work.

Closer to home we have the work of Steve Woolrich of Rethink Urban, who wrote a series of columns on community safety in this newspaper in the summer of 2020. He is also the Vice-President of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) Canada. In his columns and in his work he stresses the importance of a ‘full spectrum’ approach linking safety, design, planning and health, engaging the community in what he calls a ‘circle of compassion’.

You will have an opportunity to hear from some of those mentioned here in an online community forum co-sponsored by Livable Victoria and other key partners, to be held on Monday October 3rd, 12 – 1.30 PM. Check the Livable Victoria website for details.

© Trevor Hancock, 2022

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

Calling for the defunding of the police is an approach that is just as mistaken as calls for more policing

Dr. Trevor Hancock

14 September 2022

699 words

While community safety is about more than crime and violence, as I discussed last week, it is nonetheless where people’s minds often go. They are greatly assisted in that by the attention paid to crime and violence by the media, often amplified by what we might call the ‘law and order’ brigade, for whom the answer is more and better policing.

Now I am not about to join those calling for the de-funding of the police, an approach that is just as mistaken as calls for more policing; clearly, we need a police force that deals with crime and violence. But both the advocates of law and order and the advocates of de-funding fall into the trap that H.L. Mencken remarked upon many years ago, “For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat – and wrong!”

So instead of being simplistic, we need to recognize that community safety belongs in the category of ‘wicked problems’: “a complex issue that defies complete definition, for which there can be no final solution, since any resolution generates further issues, and where solutions are not true or false or good or bad, but the best that can be done at the time”, as Rittel and Webber defined them 50 years ago.

Obviously, the first way in which it is a complex issue that defies complete definition, as I discussed last week, is that the most important safety issues, from a public health perspective, are falls, transport-related accidents and self-harm and suicide. Intentional injury (assaults) are the fifth most common cause of injury-related hospitalization.

A second issue, which I also touched on last week, is that many assaults are either domestic/intimate partner violence or sexual violence. Statistics Canada reports that “women accounted for about 8 in 10 victims of intimate partner violence in 2020” and that 80 percent or more of such crimes are not reported to the police. So violence caused by strangers seems more common, and gets more attention, even though, as StatCan also reported, “4 out of 5 victims of solved homicides in 2020 knew their killer”.

A third issue is that assault itself is not the crime that is uppermost in people’s minds. A Victoria Police Department (VicPD) survey released in June found that when asked “Which one problem should VicPD pay closer attention to?” the top two issues were homelessness (18 per cent) and mental health (16 per cent). Then came breaking and entering (15 percent) and traffic offences (14 percent), while drug possession/use (9 percent) and drug trafficking (8 percent) were 5^th and 6^th; assault was in 7^th place at 6 percent.

This survey also reveals another aspect of the complexity. As reported in this newspaper, “Victoria police spokesman Bowen Osoko said neither homelessness nor mental health problems are criminal matters. ‘That talks to the need for more services and support for people experiencing homelessness [and] more services and support for people with mental health [issues]’”, he said

A fourth problem is that a safe community is not just about data and facts pertaining to injury, but about perception. If we do not feel safe, if we are fearful, we may not go downtown, or use the parks, or go jogging in the evening. Many factors influence our perception of safety, including the media attention focused on crime, which can heighten fear; the design and lighting of our public spaces; the extent to which there are ‘eyes on the street’ and other factors.

Finally, any truly effective approach to creating a safer community must take a public health approach. Just as with cancer or heart disease, the best outcome is not to have to treat the problem, but not to have it in the first place. So while it is tempting to resort to ‘law and order’ to arrest and punish perpetrators, it would be better to ask why is this happening, and what causes that and so on, moving upstream to identify and remedy the underlying factors that contribute to a community being and/or feeling unsafe.

In my next column I will explore some of the complex issues involved in creating a safer community, and the evidence of what does and does not work.

© Trevor Hancock, 2022

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

  

Dr. Trevor Hancock

6 September 2022

699 words

One issue we are likely to see a focus on in the upcoming municipal elections is community safety, often focusing on crime and violence. But important though that is, community safety is about much more than that.

I recall, as a consultant working on the Healthy Cities initiative with the World Health Organization in the 1980s and 1990s, seeing the very different understanding of safety in Europe compared with North America.

In Europe, the Safe Communities movement was focused largely on preventing ‘accidents’ – what in public health we call unintentional injuries. But in North America the focus of safe communities work was largely on preventing crime and violence – one part of what we call intentional injuries.

From a public health perspective, unintentional injuries are by far the larger problem. In a 2017 report, the BC Injury Prevention Committee noted “injury is the leading cause of death for ages 1 to 44 years and the fourth-leading cause of death for all ages.” Based on data from BC Vital Statistics, in 2020 there were 863 deaths from unintentional injury, 381 deaths from intentional self-harm and only 24 deaths from assault – homicide, in other words.

Hospitalisation for injury in BC in 2019/20 followed a similar pattern. By far the largest reason was falls (over 20,000, more than half of which were in those over 75), transport-related causes (almost 4,000), self-harm (just over 3,000) and unintentional poisoning (which includes drug overdose – over 1,700); assault, at just under 1,000, was fifth, with well over half occurring in the 15 – 44 age group.

Based on all of this, and reflecting those injuries which place the largest burden of injury and cost on society, the Committee identified three provincial priorities for injury prevention: Seniors falls, transport-related injuries and youth suicide and self-harm. So if we want a safer community, we need to focus first on the priorities identified by the Committee.

Within the realm of intentional injury, the largest problem is clearly self-harm. This is not to diminish the importance of assault as a cause of injury and death, as well as the mental and emotional trauma it causes, which injury data does not collect.

But even within the category of assault, it is not random violence perpetrated on strangers that should be our priority, it is family violence and sexual violence.  A 2021 report from Statistics Canada noted “one-quarter of victims of police-reported violence are victimized by a family member”, while “two-thirds of all victims of family violence” are women and girls.

Moreover, this violence, as well as sexual violence, is hugely under-reported. A 2019 StatCan report noted 80 percent of spousal violence was not reported to police, while a 2014 report found 83 percent of sexual assault was not reported.

Moreover, community safety is not just about violence, or even about crime more generally, it is about feeling as well as being safe. For example, assault – especially random violence – is seen as much more frightening (and more newsworthy) than the vastly more numerous cases of falls and traffic accidents, which too often seem to be accepted as just part of the fabric of daily life or the price we pay for getting around. This tells us that perception and emotion matters when it come to safety, not just data.

People may feel unsafe for a variety of reasons, often having little to do with criminal activity or within the purview of the police. Indigenous people, people of colour, LGBTQ people and others may feel unsafe because of discriminatory attitudes, remarks or behavior that are not criminal. And of course dark streets and parks make many of us feel unsafe, while people are troubled and perhaps scared by those who are acting strangely, are disheveled and living on the street.

So if we truly want a safer community, we need to think quite broadly about what makes our community unsafe for people, and not get sucked into an understanding of safety that is too narrowly defined as simply a matter of crime and violence and law and order. That said, next week I will focus more on that issue, stressing that it is a complex problem with no quick fixes, no easy solutions.

© Trevor Hancock, 2022

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

Dr. Trevor Hancock

30 August 2022

701 words

Shorten and add in more examples from out-takes

There is a concept in health promotion called victim-blaming – blaming smokers, for example, when in reality they are the victims of a sophisticated marketing campaign. The same concept applies to the tendency by many to blame the City of Victoria for problems such as homelessness, unaffordable housing, mental health and addictions problems and crime and violence. And with municipal elections coming up, its only going to get worse.

But in reality, these are not problems created mainly, if at all by the City, so they cannot be solved by the City. Both the causes and the solutions lie elsewhere, usually in federal and provincial policy decisions, sometimes in the actions (or inactions) of the courts, health professionals and others.

Let’s begin with mental health problems. In the 1980s there was a move to close psychiatric institutions, because they were seen as inhumane, and send people out into the community. This was a provincial decision, and was supposed to be accompanied by moving funding into the community. But by and large that did not happen, at least not anywhere near enough, leaving people who are already challenged to live on the streets, which is also inhumane.

Let’s imagine for a moment that we are talking about cancer treatment rather than treatment for people with mental health and addiction problems. Would we have closed the cancer treatment centres if we found inhumane treatment and sent the patients home to get community-based care? Would we then have under-funded the community-based care? Would we be OK with cancer patients living on the streets and not getting the care they need? Or would we fix the problem by addressing the inhumanity and providing quality care, rather than perpetuate it elsewhere. ?

Then there is the related problem of homelessness. We know from the March 2020 Homeless Count and Survey that almost two-thirds of people who are homeless had a substance use issue, well over half had a mental health issue and almost one-third an acquired brain injury. These are not people who should be living on the street. As Don Evans, then CEO of Our Place, wrote in this newspaper in October 2019 (before Covid) “It is almost impossible to stabilize someone and provide proper care until they have a safe place to lay their head at night.” So why are they homeless and on the street, where they are only made worse?

Well in part because of the closing of mental health faciltiies, as already mnoted, and in part because of a lack of suitable housing. As retired nurse Jo Vipond argued recently in this newspaper, “psychiatric housing needs to be provided for homeless people who are mentally ill”

As to camping in the parks, that came from two main factors: The B.C. Court of Appeal ruled in 2009 that people had a right to shelter in the parks if adequate shelter was not available to them, and then Covid made it necessary for people who were homeless to be sheltered in the parks until proper shelter could be provided. So it was the decisions of legal and health authorities that led to the situation in the first place, coupled with federal and provincial under-funding of social housing.

Clearly, the City of Victoria and other local municipalities did not create the policies and practices that have caused the problem, and it is unfair to expect them to fix the problem. This is not to say that local governments cannot be part of the solution, but they are not the ones who should be held accountable. It is not fair to blame the victim  – in this case, the City – for policy and program failures coming from other levels of government.

A recent national survey by . . . . . looked at people’s views on their downtowns, and found – surprise, surprise – great concern about poverty, homelessness, mental health and addictions. But as  . . . . , Mossop,  . . . . . of . . . . , commented: “It’s a national and provincial health crisis, it’s homelessness . . . It goes much deeper than what a local mayor can do.” Or as Randy Hatfield, Executive Director of the Human Development Council in St John NB, succinctly put it at a recent conference I attended: “The federal government has the resources, the provinces have the responsibility, the municipalities have the consequences.”

So let’s not blame the City of Victoria – or any other municiaplity – for the failures of the federal and provincial governments.

The City does not have the jurisdiction, power, authority or resources to fully address and solve these problems, although of course it can play a role in many of them

© Trevor Hancock, 2022

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

See also

We think B.C. downtowns are in decline: poll

High number of people working from home cited as a reason

Nathan Griffiths

Times Colonist, 16 Aug 2022

See also “Psychiatric housing needs to be provided for homeless people who are mentally ill“

Dr. Trevor Hancock

23 Aug 2022

701 words

One of my professional roles throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s was that of a health futurist. Often that involved working with scenarios of plausible alternative futures. In addition to helping people understand the implications of past, current and future actions, these scenarios are useful in exploring their values with respect to the future and helping them identify a preferred future they would want to create.

Among the range of scenarios we always included one or more that dealt with societal decline or collapse. It was, of course, nobody’s preferred future, but that did not make it implausible, in fact it was often rated among the more plausible futures. It was, however, the future that people were least interested in understanding or exploring – and that is a problem.

As I noted last week, “a number of recent reports give added credence to the notion that we are in deeper trouble than we have yet recognised.” But while I focused on the possibility of a cascade of climate tipping points leading to catastrophic climate change, I also noted that climate change is but one of the many human-induced challenges we face.

A paper published last month by the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University (for transparency, I am a member of the Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board) lists the following global systemic risks we face: “climate heating, biodiversity loss, pandemics, widening economic inequalities, financial system instability, ideological extremism, pernicious social impacts of digitalization, cyber attacks, mounting social and political unrest, large-scale forced migrations, and an escalating danger of nuclear war.”

The problem is that these systemic risks – threats “emerging within one natural, technological, or social system with impacts extending beyond that system to endanger the functionality of one or more other systems” – not only “appear to be increasing in severity . . . [and] at a faster rate”, they also seem to be happening simultaneously, the report noted.

The Institute calls this combination of interacting risks and the crises they engender a polycrisis. While this might be regional or continental in scale, a global polycrisis might result in “runaway failures of Earth’s vital natural and social systems that irreversibly degrades humanity’s prospects”.

Given that polycrises are increasingly plausible and the consequences are so severe, says the Institute, we need to pay more attention to them. However, the report notes, while our management of individual crises has often been weak and inadequate, our management – or even our consideration – of a polycrisis is “nonexistent” because we operate in silos and manage crises one at a time, in isolation.

The Institute is not alone in its concerns; similar concerns are raised by Earth4All, “an international initiative to accelerate the systems-change we need for an equitable future on a finite planet”, Led by an impressive international Transformational Economics Commission and motivated by the 1972 Club of Rome report, ‘The Limits to Growth’, (which I discussed in June), Earth4All is particularly focused on the need for economic transformation.

Concerned that “the world has ignored the risk of system collapse”, Earth4All will publish its findings in a book due out next month, which it promises will be “a survival guide to help steer humanity away from ecological and social catastrophe.”

While we don’t like to contemplate catastrophe, if we don’t, we can’t hope to avoid it. But as the case of climate change illustrated, our social, scientific and political judgements tend to be conservative. However, in downplaying the entirely plausible ‘bad news’ scenario and opting for a variant of business as usual, we avoid having to face and deal with the difficult choices and decisions that are needed.

As both the ‘Climate Endgame’ work I highlighted last week and the reports noted here make clear, we need our governments and international agencies to take seriously the plausibility of polycrises and the ensuing decline or collapse that would result. Both the ‘Climate Endgame’ group and the Cascade Institute want serious study of these situations, while Earth4All says “we need 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?” 

I think we need to do both, as a matter of urgency.

© Trevor Hancock, 2022

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

Dr. Trevor Hancock

16 Aug 2022

699 words

A recent letter to the editor (July 30) began: “Another opinion from Trevor Hancock about the upcoming end of the world”. Well actually, that is not what I said or what my columns are about. If by ‘the end of the world’ he means the planet, it is not ending any time soon. It has been around 4 billion years and will doubtless continue for billions more. Nor is life on Earth too likely to end; it has survived 5 previous ‘great extinction’ events, and will probably survive the sixth great extinction that we have initiated, although a great many species will not survive.

Even the human species is probably not at risk – although we should remember that over time, pretty much all species go extinct. But we are a highly adaptable and tough species, able to survive and indeed usually thrive in habitats as diverse as the Arctic, equatorial jungles, deserts and high altitudes. We will likely survive (in some form) anything less than the sort of major extinctions caused by an asteroid strike or massive volcanic eruptions.

What are at risk are societies and communities and our present form of ‘civilisation’, which will decline or collapse if the natural systems upon which we depend decline or collapse. If societies and communities do collapse, the health consequences will be severe, with high mortality rates, especially among the most vulnerable and marginalised.

My thoughts are occasioned not simply by the comments of one letter writer, however, but by a number of recent reports that give added credence to the notion that we are in deeper trouble than we have yet recognised.

The first is an August 1^st article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) titled “Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios”. Authored by a distinguished group of earth, climate and system scientists, the article notes that far from exaggerating the rate, severity and impacts of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a natural tendency to underestimate these factors.

The authors note four reasons for such a tendency, the result of which is that when a range of plausible models and scenarios are considered, we tend to stick with the ‘Goldilocks’ scenario – not too optimistic, but not too pessimistic. Yet, note the authors, “There is ample evidence that climate change could become catastrophic. We could enter such “endgames” at even modest levels of warming”.

Second, a recent report from Carbon Brief compiled attribution studies looking at more than 500 extreme weather events around the world. They noted “71 percent of the 504 extreme weather events and trends . . . were found to be made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change”, including 93 percent of extreme heat events. Overall, they found a number of severe heat extremes that “would have been impossible or virtually impossible without human influence on the climate”.  

One of those was the heat dome we experienced here last year. In fact, the rapid assessment study on that event, done by World Weather Attribution – a collaboration of climate scientists in several leading institutions – found “the observed temperatures were so extreme that they lie far outside the range of historically observed temperatures”.

An article on the Carbon Brief study in the Guardian (August 4^th) quotes Professor Bill McGuire of University College London as saying “What is astonishing is the speed with which global heating is translating into a hike in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather when the average temperature of the planet is up by just a little more than 1 °C.” Moreover, note the authors of the PNAS article, we are on track for “a temperature rise between 2.1 °C and 3.9 °C by 2100”.

But it’s not just climate change; the UN refers to a ‘triple crisis’ of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, and that is just on the environmental front. Add to that Covid-19 and other emerging or potential pandemics, high levels of inequality, war in Ukraine and elsewhere and political instability in many places, and the potential for all of these to interact, and we face what is being called a polycrisis, which I will discuss next week.

© Trevor Hancock, 2022

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