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

6 April 2021

Dr. Trevor Hancock

699 words

Becoming a One Planet region is a mammoth challenge, but one we have to meet unless we prefer to leave it to Mother Nature to do it for us (and to us). But that is not going to be pretty!

The key to becoming a One Planet Region is in principle very simple; use and consume a lot less stuff and energy – especially fossil fuels – and produce much less waste. Here in Victoria the Synergy Foundation’s Project Zero, which was featured in our March Conversation for a One Planet Region, puts it this way: “Our residents will own less, but live more fulfilling lives. Material goods will be shared, not stored. Our waste will be our greatest resource.”

Would that it were that easy. But we have a problem; our economic system, societal values and way of life are set up to do the exact opposite. More is better, bigger is better, faster is better. Obsolescence is planned in, repair is difficult, disposables are convenient.

One of the basic tenets of systems science is that every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets. Our present system has been described by the UK-based Ellen McArthur Foundation as a linear economy based on a ‘take-make-waste extractive industrial model’. But while profitable in the short-term, it is perfectly designed to be very wasteful and inefficient and have a large ecological footprint.

Which is where the circular economy comes in. The Ellen McArthur Foundation describes such an economy as based on three principles: “Design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use and regenerate natural systems”. All this is “underpinned by a transition to renewable energy sources”. Sadly, less than 10 percent of the global economy is circular today; the good news is there is lots of scope for expanding this approach.

The Synergy Foundation’s Project Zero identifies what are now the six ‘R’s needed to reduce pollution and waste: reduce consumption, reuse and repair products and redistribute, recondition and recycle them.

Their program, in partnership with the Vancity Credit Union as well as the City of Victoria, BC Hydro, the Victoria Foundation and Environment and Climate Change Canada, supports new small enterprises that are working to create a local circular economy. They anticipate this will create hundreds of jobs, with more products made and repaired locally and fewer goods arriving from off-Island, which will result in reduced emissions, packaging and waste.

The five-year program is based on an incubator model, with a small number of new business ideas and early start-ups selected each year. They receive free business development advice, including advice and training on creating a business plan and pitching their idea, learning entrepreneurial skills and connecting with mentors. This work is supported by guest experts from local colleges and universities and local business consultancies. 

So what sort of circular economy businesses are being created in the Greater Victoria Region? Well, in the 2019 cohort we find businesses that work to make home composting easier (Bin Breeze), convert waste cooking oils to biofuel (Ergo); sell donated art, office, & school supplies to support educational programs (Supply Victoria), create reusable and returnable coffee cups and takeout containers (The Nulla Project) and even design the world’s first eco-friendly glow stick by using bioluminescence (Nyoka).

The 2020 cohort includes businesses that repair and reuse materials such as outdoor gear (Basecamp Repairs), old sails (Salt Legacy), burlap coffee bags and hotel linens (Thread Lightly) and plastics (Flipside Plastics); create energy recovery systems (Polar Engineering), use ‘green’ cleaning products (Positively Clean), create economic opportunities for binners (The Diverters) and even offer solar-powered tours (Tesla Tours).

Government has an important role to play too. Locally, a much stronger commitment is needed to Zero Waste strategies such as recently adopted by the City of Victoria. The BC or federal governments need to ban single-use products wherever possible, legislate the right to repair and attack planned obsolescence.

The circular economy is just getting started, but has huge potential, as more than 90 percent of our economy is not yet circular. So support these businesses where you can, demand governments play their part, and stay tuned, there is much more still to come!

© Trevor Hancock, 2021

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.

31 March 2021

Dr Trevor Hancock

698 words

As an internationally acknowledged expert on the creation of healthier cities and communities, I have been observing with both bemusement and concern the furor in this newspaper’s letters page over Victoria City Council’s actions on bike lanes, homelessness, affordable housing and the like.

Bemusement because it seems to me that in many ways what Council is trying to do is create a more sustainable, livable and healthy city in line with the best practices found in many European and some North American cities, emphasizing walking, biking and strong neighbourhoods.

I don’t hear many visitors to cities such as Copenhagen or Amsterdam – or the many livable cities like them in Europe that are more Victoria-sized – come away saying ‘what this place needs is more cars and parking’. For far too long, the automobile has been king in our cities, causing air and noise pollution, injuries and deaths, and contributing to inactivity and climate change; it is time it was dethroned.

Victoria Council is also trying with humaneness and compassion to deal with a perfect storm of homelessness, mental health and substance use problems, aggravated by Covid-19. But these are problems that were not created by the city in the first place, but by other levels of government over the past decades.

It was the provincial government that closed the mental health institutions and then failed to put in place adequate funding and support for community care, as retired social workers Joni Hockert (March 8^th) and Gail Simpson (March 18^th) pointed out in compassionate and outraged columns.

It was Health Canada and the medical profession that failed to protect Canadians from the pharmaceutical industry’s unethical marketing of opioids and the inappropriate prescribing by physicians, that led to the opioid crisis.

It was the federal and provincial governments who abandoned social housing in the 1990s and allowed minimum wages and social assistance to stagnate, leading to the crisis of unaffordable housing. And it was the courts that quite properly gave people the right to camp in the parks in the absence of other and better shelter.

My concern is that the criticism is getting out of hand, with a nasty edge to it. In the eyes of some, nothing that the Mayor and the majority of Council do is right, and the anger and vituperation heaped upon them is intemperate and excessive. Yet despite what letter writer Bob Beckwith wrote on March 26^th, it is not the minority ruling the majority; I think he confuses the people who write angry letters to the Times Colonist – many of whom do not live in Victoria – with the voting public.

In the 2018 election Mayor Lisa Helps got 12,642 votes, 43 percent of the total, almost 4,000 votes more than her nearest rival, Stephen Hammond, of NewCouncil.ca. As to Council members, Ben Isitt and Jeremy Loveday topped the polls and three members of Together Victoria were also elected. Meanwhile, not one of the four NewCouncil.ca candidates was elected.

Moreover turnout was almost 45 percent of eligible voters, which is quite high for municipal elections; in this region, only Oak Bay (53.6 percent) and Sidney (48.4 percent) had higher turnouts, while Metchosin and North Saanich almost matched Victoria. The rest had turnouts ranging from 25 to 41 percent, while the nadir was Langford (18.5 percent) and Highlands, where the Mayor and Council were acclaimed without a vote. So if turnout is an indication of the legitimacy of an election, there has to be doubt about the legitimacy of many councils other than Victoria in this region.

Lawrie McFarlane wrote on March 21^st that people need to “take back our city”. Take it back from whom? The people who care about sheltering those who are homeless, vulnerable and distressed? Who want to create more walkable, bikeable, livable communities? Who are trying to protect and restore the environment for future generations?

I may not agree with every decision Victoria Council has made, but I have never doubted that the Council is doing its best in challenging circumstances. People may not like the results of the election or the decisions made by Victoria Council, but it’s called democracy and its better than all the alternatives.

© Trevor Hancock, 2021

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.

22 March 2021

Dr Trevor Hancock

700 words

Last week I noted three ways proposed by Professor Graham Smith to reform our democracy to safeguard the future and dealt with two of them; re-shaping legislatures and constitutions and bringing an independent voice to decision-making. This week I turn to his third proposal; futures-oriented participatory democracy.

My interest in futures thinking began when I read Alvin Toffler’s book ‘Future Shock’ in the early 1970s. In it he proposed the concept of ‘anticipatory democracy’, which my close friend and colleague Clem Bezold – one of the world’s leading futurists and founder with Toffler of the Institute for Alternative Futures – defines as involving “enhanced participation in shaping the future.”

While the first two of Smith’s proposals are essentially high-level interventions at the national and provincial levels, participatory democracy needs to be bottom-up, which makes it particularly relevant to the municipal and neighbourhood levels.

It is thus of considerable interest to Conversations for a One Planet Region, the NGO I have founded to establish and maintain conversations about what it means to become a region with a markedly reduced ecological footprint yet with a high quality of life.

Participatory democracy can be related to the concept of community architecture, which is based on the simple principle that the environment works best when those who live and work in it are involved in its design. It is an approach that is central to the concept of Healthy Communities, my main area of work.

Our challenge, then, is to engage people in the Greater Victoria Region in conversations about designing a community fit for the 21^st century; one with a high quality of life and good health for all while taking only our fair share of the Earth’s biocapacity and resources.

But ideally anticipatory democracy would mean engaging people who will live in the future in its design. Obviously we need to engage young people in the process, since it’s their future we are designing. Clearly schools can and should play an important role, as they do as part of One Planet Saanich.

But we also we need to get today’s adults to raise their focus from what affects them today and take into account the needs of future generations, including those not yet born, recognizing that their situation and needs will be very different from our own.

This is where the provincial Commissioner for the Wellbeing of Future Generations that I suggested last week could play a role. The Commissioner should appoint regional Commissioners to ensure that regional and municipal governments are taking future generations into account, and to facilitate the engagement of young people.

Another idea we might try was described in a recent article in The Alternative UK, which reports on Roman Krznaric’s description of Japan’s Future Design movement in his book ‘The Good Ancestor’. Their approach might be used as part of the One Planet Neighbourhood co-design charettes that we hope to develop as part of our Conversations.

A group of local residents would be brought together to discuss how to improve the design and functioning of their neighbourhood as it is and they are today. But then they are asked to take the “imaginative step of picturing themselves living – at their current age – several decades into the future”. As they start to imagine how their decisions will affect the lives of their children and grandchildren, Krznaric writes, “they systematically favour much more transformative plans, whether discussing issues such as health care, the future impacts of AI or ecological threats.”

Another model worth considering is the Lüneburg 2030 ‘City of the Future’ project, which developed and used sustainability visions in 25 different thematic fields. Jointly developed in this German city of 75,000 people by the local university, city government, local NGOs, businesses and citizens, it is clearly an approach that could work here.

I am convinced that involving people in designing and creating a community fit for the 21^st century is a very important and indeed urgent issue. Perhaps we should establish a Regional Commission for the Future to take on this work, supported by regional and municipal governments, school boards, colleges and universities, the business sector and community organisations such as the Victoria Foundation and the Community Social Planning Council.

© Trevor Hancock, 2021

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

17 March 2021

698 words

Too often, politics is focused on the short-term. We see it everywhere: Support for clearcutting the last stands of old growth forest, fishing to the last fish, maintaining and even expanding the fossil fuel industry – the list goes on. Only when it is almost too late do we act – and not always even then.

The reason is not hard to find: The future doesn’t vote, nor does it fund campaigns or provide jobs for today’s voters. So we discount the future, ignore the needs of the next generations, and largely carry on with an occasionally modified form of ‘business as usual’.  

But in a world where our ecological systems are under threat by a combination of population and economic growth, rising expectations and the widespread deployment of our powerful technologies, such an approach is a threat to our entire society and especially to our descendants.

We should recall that sustainable development was defined by the Brundtland Commission in 1987 as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

So we need to change the way democracy and governance works. At the very least we need to value future generations as much as we do the current generations, and perhaps even more, since they are not here to speak for themselves. And we certainly should pay attention to young people, whose future we are deciding upon.

Enter Graham Smith, Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster in Britain, where he is Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy; he also is Chair of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development. So these are issues he thinks about a lot, and writes about in his book “Can Democracy Safeguard the Future?”, released this month.

He looks at three areas that we would be wise to consider. First, he argues for re-shaping legislatures and constitutions; second, he proposes bringing an independent voice to decision-making by “strengthening independent offices whose overarching goals do not change at every election”; third, he focuses on participatory democracy, an area of particular interest for him. What might all this mean here?

Well, one place to start would be to change the Canadian Constitution both to recognise that people have a right to a healthy environment and that Nature has rights. Achieving the first is the target of the David Suzuki Foundation’s ‘Blue Dot’ campaign. As to the second, we can look to Aotearoa New Zealand, where both a river and a region have been recognized as having rights. Both these areas are also the focus of the work of Dr. David Boyd, the BC-based UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, another source of knowledge and inspiration.

Turning to independent officers, this is not a new model. We have had Auditors General for decades, whose reports on the government’s finances are tabled with the Legislature.  Here in BC we also have the Representative for Children and Youth and the BC Seniors Advocate, while federally there is a Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, although appointed, oddly, by the Auditor General.

But why is independent reporting on public finances more important than independent reporting on what should be our main concern – the achievement of high levels of health, wellbeing and human development in a way that is socially just and ecologically sustainable. It’s time for a separate and equal-ranking Wellbeing Auditor General, both at the federal and provincial levels.

Such a position could well incorporate a related function, for which a model already exists in Wales: The Wellbeing for Future Generations Commissioner. Backed by the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, the Commissioner’s duties are “to promote the sustainable development principle, and act as a guardian of the ability for future generations in Wales to meet their needs, encouraging public bodies to think about the long-term impact of what they do.”

The third part of Graham Smith’s proposed approach is a futures-oriented participatory democracy. It too is not a new idea; Alvin Toffler discussed ‘anticipatory democracy’ in his 1970 book ‘Future Shock’. I believe it is well suited to local action, and I will address it in my next column.

© Trevor Hancock, 2021

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 ‘Doughnut economy means not spending $100M on interchange’

Dr Trevor Hancock

10 March 2021

700 words

Our most important task in the 21^st century is to transform our society and economy so we live within the “safe and just space for humanity”, as Kate Raworth describes it in her Doughnut Economics model. This means an economy large enough and fair enough that we can meet everyone’s needs (the ‘social foundation’) but small enough that we can live within the limits of the Earth (the ‘ecological ceiling’).

In thinking about what a Doughnut economy means at the local level, the Doughnut Economy Action Lab suggests we ask “how can our city be a home to thriving people, in a thriving place, whilst respecting the wellbeing of all people, and the health of the whole planet?”

This means, they say, asking what it would mean for the people – ALL the people – of this region to thrive and for the region to thrive within its natural habitat. But, they add, it also means asking what would it mean for this region to respect the wellbeing of people worldwide and to respect the health of the whole planet. In other words, think globally and act locally.

To date, only a few cities have begun to ask these questions, foremost of which is Amsterdam, closely followed by Copenhagen, the Brussels region, Dunedin in Aotearoa New Zealand and Nanaimo. According to an article in Time magazine in January about Amsterdam’s adoption of Doughnut Economics, policies based on this model “aim to protect the environment and natural resources, reduce social exclusion and guarantee good living standards for all.”

What might that mean here. Well, let’s look at the thorny problem of affordable housing. In Brussels, the Community Land Trust acquires land that it holds in trust for the community. Low-income families can buy and sell a house, but the land remains community-owned in perpetuity. Moreover, the Trust involves the residents in the design and management of the housing, and the homes they build are environmentally friendly passive houses, re-using construction material where possible.

How about transportation? Well, we wouldn’t waste $100 million on a pointless highway interchange at McKenzie that just encourages urban sprawl and commuting. First, we would moderately intensify housing fairly, using the 1.5 percent principle proposed by Todd Litman of Cities for Everyone; since the region’s population grows by 1.5 percent annually, each municipality and neighbourhood should grow that much.

This should be achieved not by building high-rise condo towers downtown but by sensitive in-filling to create “moderate-priced housing in walkable neighbourhoods”, says Litman, with traditional-looking but more dense homes. Look at the recently approved ASH (affordable, sustainable housing) project on Richardson St in Victoria and similar innovative proposals for what has been called ‘gentle densification’.

Then we could take that $100 million and invest it in decentralised work spaces and telecommute centres in the western and northern suburbs and better transit.

Amsterdam is also pushing the denim clothing industry to include 20 percent recycled material in its products by 2023 and is encouraging the development of more repair shops where people can get their clothing fixed rather than just throwing it out.

Philadelphia is also looking at the Doughnut economy, according to a recent article in Yes! Magazine. While Covid has set them back, it has also been a spur to action: we need “a green and just recovery”, said the director of the city’s Office of Sustainability. One approach they are looking at is to replace school meals made in Brooklyn and sent to the city with lunches that are made locally using locally grown food, creating local employment.

Finally, how about paying the full cost of our products and services by paying local workers a living wage and including the full cost of the environmental and social impacts in the price we pay. The Time magazine article on Amsterdam provides an example: Zucchini would cost an extra 15¢ per kilo  – 6¢ for the carbon footprint, 5¢ for the impact of farming on the land, and 4¢ for fair pay.

Yes, it will be more expensive, but if we don’t pay the full cost, our descendants will pay the price in ecological decline, social conflict and poor health. Is that the legacy we want to leave?

© Trevor Hancock, 2021

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 ‘Circular economy doesn’t go far enough’

Dr. Trevor Hancock

3 March 2021

700 words

Something good is happening: We are finally starting to question the economy and the way it works – or fails to work – for us and for nature, which sustains us.  A month ago I wrote a couple of columns about Doughnut economics, then took a bit of a diversion to explore the Dasgupta report on including in the economy the costs we impose on nature and – last week – the UN Secretary General’s observation that in waging war on nature we are suffering “towering economic losses”.

So what does this economic re-thinking mean at a local level, in the place where we live, learn, work, shop and play? How should we re-think and re-make our economy? Happily, various people and organisations are starting to think about this. Last week there was a front-page article in this newspaper by Lindsay Kines about the work of Project Zero to create a circular economy, with supportive resolutions adopted by both Victoria and Nanaimo councils.

A circular economy stands in contrast to our current linear ‘take-make-waste’ economy, in which we obtain resources, process and use them, then send the waste away, out there somewhere. Think of disposable plastic bags or coffee cups, or any number of other disposable products, up to and including your car and house. There are two big problems with this model, and both relate to nature, and the way nature works.

First, there is no ‘away’ in nature, our wastes end up somewhere and do harm to plants, animals and entire ecosystems. Moreover, only too often our wastes come back to haunt and harm us. Second, nature never discards anything, it all gets decomposed, recycled and re-used in some way, whereas we waste a lot of energy and resources by failing to close the loop.

A circular economy seeks to avoid these problems – greatly reducing both our wasteful use of scarce resources and our excessive production of wastes – by closing the loop. The UK-based Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a leading advocate for the circular economy, proposes three key principles: Design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use, and regenerate natural systems. This is underpinned by “designing products that can be ‘made to be made again’ and powering the system with renewable energy.”

It is a concept that has a lot of powerful support, including the World Economic Forum, which notes that businesses using this model gain a competitive edge because they “create more value from each unit of resource”, as Paul Shorthouse from Canada’s Circular Economy Leadership Coalition noted in a recent presentation to the Climate Caucus (a Canadian network of municipal leaders). The Coalition includes a number of large corporations, including Canadian Tire, Ikea, Loblaws, Unilever and Walmart.

But while the concept of the circular economy is undoubtedly useful and important, for me it does not go far enough. I find the Doughnut economy a more comprehensive and valuable model, for two reasons that are core to that model: First, it recognizes the ‘ecological ceiling’, the limits to growth imposed by the finite nature of the Earth.

Thus in an April 2019 essay in the Steady State Herald Herman Daly, the elder statesman of ecological economics, noted the circular economy is really a “recycling economy” and that it can only work if the economy “does not grow in scale beyond the regenerative and absorptive capacities of the containing biosphere” – the Earth.

A second reason is quite neatly summed up in a couple of pithy summaries of the two models. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation describes the circular economy as one “that is restorative and regenerative by design”, while Kate Raworth describes her Doughnut economics model as “distributive and regenerative”.

In other words, the Doughnut model recognizes that the implication of the ecological ceiling is that if the economy can’t grow beyond a certain size in terms of its impact on the Earth, then we can only meet everyone’s needs through redistribution. Thus it links the economy centrally to the social purpose of ensuring an equitable distribution of the goods and services that provide a social foundation for all.

Next week – finally, I hear you say – I will look at what a Doughnut Economy might mean at the local level.

© Trevor Hancock, 2021

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.

23 February 2021

Dr. Trevor Hancock

700 words

Our relationship with the Earth has long been troubled. Thanks largely to two key developments – the adoption of Judeo-Christian beliefs and the philosophy of the Enlightenment – the Western worldview has been that we are separate from and superior to nature, leading us to horribly mistreat nature.

Prior to the emergence of Judeo-Christian thought there were multiple gods and nature spirits; between them, they embodied nature, for which there was a reverence. Writing in The Conversation in September 2019, University of Nottingham lecturer Heather Alberro noted people “generally considered the sacred to be found throughout nature, and humanity as thoroughly enmeshed within it.”

But then along came the monotheistic religions of Judaism and Christianity and, wrote Alberro, “their sole god – as well as sacredness and salvation – were re-positioned outside of nature.” Not just outside of, but actually superior to nature.

The roots of our current crisis can be seen clearly in Genesis, Chapter 1, where “God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

So there we have it, not just the exhortation to subdue the earth and have dominion over every living thing, but to multiply the human population. Added to that was the Enlightenment view, first championed by René Descartes, not only that mind and body are separate but that humans, as the only rational beings, were separate from both inanimate nature and mindless animals, which are ours to exploit.

Hence nature is excluded from our thinking and from our economic models, as my two recent columns on the Dasgupta Review have discussed. And hence what the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has called our suicidal war on nature.

The ‘war’ metaphor with respect to our relationship with nature is not new, but is getting a new prominence these days. Here in Canada Seth Klein, long the Director of the BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, has written a book titled “A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency”. In it, he argues that we need to adopt an approach to the climate crisis based on lessons to be learned from our mobilization in the Second World War.

But as my friend and colleague Thom Heyd, an Adjunct Professor in Environmental Studies at UVic, noted, “Are there ever “good wars” in this world? . . . What’s wrong with “A Good Peace” instead?” So I imagine Thom will be very pleased with the major new report from the UN Environment Program, released February 18^th, entitled “Making Peace with Nature”.

In his foreword to the report, the UN Secretary General notes the triple human-created threat we face: “the climate emergency, the biodiversity crisis and the pollution that kills millions of people every year.”

In the face of this challenge, he writes, “making peace with nature is the defining task of the coming decades”, adding that we need “a peace plan and a post-war rebuilding programme.” The report provides these.

Making peace with nature, writes Guterres, will mean “transforming how we view nature”, so that “we can recognize its true value”, and then “ reflecting this value in policies, plans and economic systems”. The report calls for a transformation of our societal and economic systems, including our energy and food production systems, the way we treat the land, waters and oceans and the way we treat our wastes.

Such transformations, the report says, are key to addressing major social concerns such as “poverty elimination, equity, health, economic development, peace, food, water, sanitation, safe cities and settlements”; what Kate Raworth, in her Doughnut Economics model calls the social foundation of society.

In short, we must heed the wise words attributed to the 19^th century Dwamish Chief, Seattle: “We are part of the great web of life, and whatever we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves”. So when we wage war on nature, we are really waging war on ourselves at the same time, which as Guterres notes, is “senseless and suicidal” – and I would say, insane. It’s time to make peace.

© Trevor Hancock, 2021

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.

16 February 2021

Dr. Trevor Hancock

699 words

Last week I provided an overview of Professor Partha Dasgupta’s report for the UK Treasury on the economics of biodiversity and the value of nature. This week, I want to share his proposals for change and relate them to several important current issues.

In the Headlines’ version of his report, Professor Dasgupta’s first message is simple: “Our economies, livelihoods and well-being all depend on our most precious asset: Nature”. So what would it mean to actually recognize this and incorporate nature into our economies and societies?

Not surprisingly, as an economist, he believes “the solution starts with understanding and accepting a simple truth: our economies are embedded within Nature, not external to it”. A number of important implications flow from this, one of which is that we need to change the way we measure what we do.

Today our primary measure of economic success is the GDP. But since it “does not account for the depreciation of assets, including the natural environment”, Dasgupta writes, “it therefore encourages us to pursue unsustainable economic growth and development”. So we need to replace the GDP with a more meaningful measure such as the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, the Genuine Progress Indicator or some other measure of inclusive or comprehensive wealth.

BC’s NDP government was supposed to have been developing a report on replacing the GDP in BC as part of their agreement with the Green Party. The report is long overdue and seems to have stalled. Premier Horgan and Finance Minister Selina Robinson need to read the Dasgupta Review and make this a priority.

A related issue, also a hot topic in BC, concerns subsidies. Because we do not have to pay for many of our biosphere’s services, Professor Dasgupta explains, they are in effect free. In fact, he goes on to say, it is even worse than that: “Governments almost everywhere amplify adverse environmental externalities by paying people more to exploit the biosphere than they do to protect it”, through subsidies to various resource use and extraction industries, including agriculture and fossil fuels.

So we need to remove these “perverse subsidies”, which amount to about US$500 billion globally. Moreover, he points out, “it has been estimated that to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and ocean . . .  by 2030 would require an average investment of US$140 billion annually” – so transferring less than one third of those subsidies to ecosystem protection would not only protect but would restore nature.

In fact, Dasgupta notes, “as part of fiscal stimulus packages in the wake of COVID-19, investment in natural capital has the potential for quick returns”. This fits well with the calls from many quarters for a green, healthy and just recovery, a ‘Green New Deal’; all these ideas should be incorporated in federal and provincial ‘build back better’ budgets currently under consideration.

But if all this is to come to pass, we also need profound changes in our institutions and in the core values that underpin our society and drive our economy. So it is encouraging that Dasgupta has an entire section in his report on education, and another on the sacred in nature.

Throughout his report, Dasgupta repeatedly refers to our attitude, rooted also in our economics, that we are detached from nature, not embedded within it. This he attributes to our separation from nature, especially as a result of urbanization. So he proposes “Every child in every country is owed the teaching of natural history, to be introduced to the awe and wonder of the natural world, to appreciate how it contributes to our lives”.

But, he adds, “connecting with Nature needs to be woven throughout our lives”. Part of that is to recognize that nature has intrinsic worth; “Many people, perhaps in all societies, locate the sacred in Nature”, he notes, suggesting “Nature’s transcendence gives it a value that is independent of us”.

And he ends on a note of optimism, suggesting that if we have been smart and powerful enough to cause so much harm to nature so quickly, surely we can use that same ingenuity “to bring about transformative change, perhaps even in just as short a time. We and our descendants deserve nothing less”.

© Trevor Hancock, 2021

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 ‘Our economic system needs to recognize the price – and value – of nature’)

Dr. Trevor Hancock

9 February 2021

701 words

A cynic, Oscar Wilde wrote, is someone who “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. On that basis, our dominant economic system – corporate capitalism – is beyond cynical. It  takes Wilde’s aphorism one giant step further because it doesn’t even know or take into account the price of everything, never mind recognise and account for that which is priceless.

That, if not quite in those words, is the conclusion of a startling review of the economics of biodoversity by the distinguished Cambridge economics professor Sir Partha Dasgupta. Startling not just because of what he says, but because of who commissioned his report: The Chancellor of the Exchequer (read ‘Minister of Finance’) in Boris Johnson’s UK government. So this week I am taking a side trip on the road to Doughnut Economics to consider his important report; next week I will look at how we will have to change.

What Professor Dasgupta has to say is both simple and profoundly important: We have not correctly included either the price or the value of nature in our economic models and practices, or in the price of our goods and services. Instead we treat them as an ‘externality’, by which he means “the unaccounted-for consequences for others, including future people, of actions taken by one or more persons”. In other words, we gain at the expense of people elsewhere, future generations and, he might have added, other species.

The result of ignoring the harm to nature (and, he might also have added, harm to people’s health and the social wellbeing of communities) caused by our economic system and way of life, he writes, is that “while humanity has prospered immensely in recent decades, the ways in which we have achieved such prosperity means that it has come at a devastating cost to Nature.”

In fact, he reports, “between 1992 and 2014, produced capital per person doubled, and human capital [health, education, aptitude and skills] per person increased by about 13 percent globally”. However, he adds, “the stock of natural capital per person declined by nearly 40 percent”. Moreover, we should note this is only over 22 years; the decline since the onset of the ‘great acceleration’ in human impact in the 1950s is far greater.

The result is that “many ecosystems, from tropical forests to coral reefs, have already been degraded beyond repair, or are at imminent risk of ‘tipping points’. These tipping points could have catastrophic consequences for our economies and well-being.” Sadly, as he notes, this “is what economic growth and development has come to mean for many people”.

But even if we could include the cost of ecological harm in the price of our goods and services, that would not be enough; Professor Dasgupta notes “Nature is more than an economic good: many value its very existence and recognise its intrinsic worth too”.

This view is evident in a 2018 report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) on the measurement of ‘comprehensive wealth’, by which they mean the combination of five forms of capital: Produced (infrastructure, buildings and machinery), natural, human, financial (stocks, bonds and cash) and social capital.

While some forms of natural capital – so-called market natural assets such as the minerals, fossil fuels, timber, water resources and fish we extract) can be expressed in monetary terms, other forms of natural capital – a stable and warm climate and key ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, grasslands, lakes/rivers and the oceans – “are, effectively, priceless”.

That is because the latter  “are critical to well-being. Any degradation in them imposes direct and irreplaceable costs on well-being, and their monetary value is, therefore, not relevant”. So while we may be able to measure and account for some forms of natural capital, those ecosystem ‘goods and services’ that are critical to our wellbeing “cannot (and should not) be included in aggregate measures of comprehensive wealth”.

In other words, it is not enough to understand the price of nature, we need to recognise that it is to a significant degree priceless, of inestimable value. As a society, we need to know not just the price but the value of nature, and we need an economic system that recognises and incorporates this.

© Trevor Hancock, 2021

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.

3 February 2021

Dr Trevor Hancock

700 words

Last week I suggested that true prosperity is doughnut-shaped, but I did not define what I mean by ‘true prosperity’, nor what Doughnut Economics means for this region. I will explore the first of these topics this week and the second next week.

One understanding of true prosperity can be found in many faiths, where it is not primarily about material wealth but about mental, social and spiritual wealth. For example, Paramhansa Yogananda, the first Indian yoga master to live and teach permanently in the West, wrote in 1939 that true prosperity is “being able to supply your mental and spiritual needs, as well as the physical”, and that it involves having “at your command the things that are necessary for your existence”.

The things that are necessary for your existence are the basic human needs of clean air and water, shelter, sufficient food that is safe and nutritious, education, good basic health care, an adequate income to ensure these and a safe and supportive community. These and other ‘social determinants of health’ are what Kate Raworth means by the social foundation in her model of Doughnut Economics.

In the mid-20^th century the social psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a hierarchy of human needs: First people must satisfy such basic physiological needs as hunger, thirst and bodily comforts (being warm and dry, for example), then ensure their safety and security. The third and fourth sets of needs are a sense of acceptance, belonging and being loved, followed by a sense of self-esteem – feeling competent, gaining respect and recognition.

But beyond these foundational needs, Maslow suggested that people have a need for what he called self-actualisation. There are several aspects to this, including being knowledgeable and curious, having an appreciation of beauty, finding self-fulfillment and realizing one’s potential, and finally what he called transcendence – helping others to achieve their own self-actualisation.

These concepts are very much how I understand health, as indeed does the World Health Organisation: “A state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing” (to which some would add spiritual wellbeing), or the achievement by everyone of the highest human potential of which they are capable. Clearly, while it takes a certain amount of wealth to ensure the social foundation, it is not necessary to accumulate vast amounts of ‘stuff’, of bling, to achieve this state, as it is largely non-material.

But the other key element of Raworth’s Doughnut model is the ecological ceiling. We cannot meet human needs for all in ways that undermine the ecological systems that are the ultimate determinants of our health.  As the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity at the University of Surrey in England puts it: “Our guiding vision for sustainable prosperity is one in which people everywhere have the capability to flourish as human beings – within the ecological and resource constraints of a finite planet”.

Those constraints are very real and increasingly apparent. We see it in the changing climate and the decaying oceans, in the depletion of key resources and the pollution of ecosystems and food chains, and in the loss of natural habitat and the extinction of species. Already we exceed the planet’s limits, and yet we have more people wanting more stuff and an economic system demanding more growth.

Which of course takes us to Gandhi, who said “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” Or as Herman Daly, one of the key thinkers in the area of ecological economics, puts it in his foreword to the 2017 book Enough Is Enough: “Enough should be the central concept in economics. Enough means ‘sufficient for a good life’” And he added “this raises the perennial philosophical question, ‘What is a good life?’” – a question I have tried to answer above.

So what would it mean to redesign our economy and society to ensure human flourishing for all within the ecological and resource constraints of the Earth? That is the question that the Green New Deal and similar proposals for a sustainable, just and healthy post-Covid recovery seek to answer. It is the central question of our time, including right here in the Greater Victoria Region, and the topic for next week.

© Trevor Hancock, 2021

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.