Encouraging reduced use of fossil fuels by making them more expensive will result in less air pollution, reducing the health impacts of both air pollution and climate change.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

24 September 2024

701 words

Last week I noted the so-called ‘carbon tax’ is actually a form of pollution pricing. It is very clear that pollution causes harm; Oxford Reference defines it as “Contamination or undesirable modification of soil, food, water, clothing, or the atmosphere by a noxious or toxic substance”, adding that “Any form of pollution can have adverse effects on health.”

Moreover, that harm is not exclusive to humans; plants, animals and entire ecosystems are also affected by pollution, and damage to them can indirectly affect us. For example, we all carry a body-burden of persistent organic pollutants, much of which comes to us through our food.

In addition, polluted environments can have a social impact, as when a beach is closed due to contaminated water, or we can’t go outdoors due to air pollution, or food production is reduced by climate change.

All of these impacts have an economic cost. Broadly speaking, direct human costs are measured in the value of lives lost, the cost of treating pollution-related illness and the lost production due to sickness-related work absence.

For example, a 2021 Health Canada report on the health impact attributable to air pollution in Canada – mostly arising from the combustion of fossil fuels – noted that in 2016 there were 15,300 premature deaths, 8,100 emergency room visits, 2.7 million asthma symptom days and 35 million acute respiratory symptom days per year.

The total economic cost of these health impacts in 2016 due to medical costs, reduced workplace productivity, pain and suffering was about $120 billion, or roughly 6 percent of GDP. Note that Health Canada considers this an under-estimate of the full impact of exposure to air pollution in Canada, and that these costs do not include the impacts of air pollution on animals, plants or the wider environment.

Unlike air pollution, which is mainly a local condition with direct effects on health, the health costs of the carbon dioxide emissions (or more broadly, greenhouse gas emissions) that are the target of carbon pricing are experienced world-wide and indirectly. The carbon we emit – and Canada is among the highest per person emitters in the world – has a global impact.

Here in Canada we have seen the health, social and economic costs of heat domes, increased wildfires, atmospheric rivers and hurricanes, all of which are made more likely, more frequent and more severe by global heating. Moreover, as a 2022 report from Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer noted, “The impacts are not just physical, however. Negative mental health impacts, such as worry, grief, anxiety, anger, hopelessness, and fear are linked to climate change.”

Food production, cost and availability will be affected by changes in our agricultural systems due to drought or flooding and changes in the distribution and availability of fish. Communities will face increased inundation from rising sea levels, threatening the safety of their water supply and sewage systems and requiring expensive changes in infrastructure. Meanwhile, communities in the North – where heating is occurring four times more than the global average – will also be affected by the shifting of forests and animals as climate changes. 

But the global impacts are much more severe: Climate change, the World Health Organization states, “is the single biggest health threat facing humanity.” We can expect to see millions of eco-refugees – many of them experiencing malnutrition and starvation – as large areas become unfit for habitation due to heat, desertification, rising sea levels and the like. Meanwhile the increasing frequency and severity of severe weather events will cause large numbers of deaths and injuries and much illness. Infectious diseases, especially those spread by mosquitoes, ticks and other insects will become more widespread as warmer temperatures enlarge the territory wherein those insects can survive and spread.

So carbon pricing is really a health measure. Its stated purpose is to encourage a reduction in the use of fossil fuels by making them more expensive, thus encouraging more efficient use and a switch to alternatives. Not only will this contribute to lower carbon emissions, it will also result in less air pollution, since that mostly arises from fossil fuel combustion. And that in turn reduces the health impacts of both air pollution and climate change, which benefits all of us.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

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

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

Either we start paying the full cost of our depredations on the planet’s ecological systems and natural resources, or our children and grandchildren will be paying the price

Dr. Trevor Hancock

17 September 2024

697 words

By proclaiming the carbon tax “is an existential threat to our economy and our way of life” and that it threatens a “nuclear winter” for the economy, Pierre Poilievre has entered the world of full-on craziness and inverted logic.

The reality is exactly the opposite. The ‘carbon tax’ – actually, a form of pollution pricing, as the Supreme Court has confirmed – is not an existential threat to our economy and way of life. On the contrary, it is our economy and way of life that poses an existential threat to large parts of humanity, other species, and global and regional ecosystems.

The pursuit of endless economic growth – a ridiculous concept on a finite planet – to support a way of life that generally makes us greedy for more stuff, undermines the very fundamentals of human existence and wellbeing; the Earth’s natural systems.

Moreover, far from causing a nuclear winter – an absurd and vastly over-reaching analogy anyway – carbon pricing is one way to prevent the ongoing over-heating of the planet, with dire consequences for future generations.

Of course, Poilievre is not alone – although his idiotic ‘axe the tax’ slogan and his desire to label the next election a ‘carbon tax election’ is especially perfidious. Getting rid of carbon pricing has now been cravenly embraced by the federal NDP and numerous provincial premiers, including David Eby here in B.C., prompting B.C. Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau to state “This is a government with no principles and no direction.”

Furthermore, because there is a federal carbon pricing system in place, upheld by the Supreme Court, dropping the tax in B.C will have no effect, since the federal system will kick in, as it does in other provinces.

A helpful explainer in The Narwhal points out “the pool of money the federal government collects through the price on carbon is redistributed to all Canadians” via the Canada Carbon Rebate, while “Money collected through carbon levies for industrial emitters are returned to the provinces and territories and are meant to fund greener technologies.”

In abandoning the NDP’s support for carbon pricing, Zero Carbon columnist Chris Hatch noted last week in Canada’s National Observer, Jagmeet Singh completely ignored the benefits of the rebate to working people; the same applies to David Eby.

Eby’s chief rival, Conservative Party leader John Rustad, is even worse. He appears to remain at heart a climate change denier, downplaying the importance of climate change, suggesting that scientists are still debating whether humans contribute to climate change and denying it’s a crisis. He says, wrongly, that carbon pricing is “an economic disaster and an environmental failure”, that it drives up prices while failing to lower emissions.

However, Canada’s independent Ecofiscal Commission, in an open letter in March signed by 335 leading economists from across Canada, stated “Not only does carbon pricing reduce emissions, but it does so at a lower cost than other approaches.” Moreover, the evidence shows it “has a negligible impact on overall inflation.”

So what exactly is carbon pricing? Well, it’s a form of pollution pricing, a small step on the way to all of us paying the full cost for the natural resources we use, the environmental harms we cause and the health and social damage currently accruing to future generations.

But the sad reality is that politicians of all stripes have little or no concern for the wellbeing of future generations, or even of today’s young people, for one simple reason: The future doesn’t have a vote. And so we get empty and idiotic slogans masquerading as policy.

So in the spirit of these times, I propose another slogan to counter Poilievre’s foolish ‘axe the tax’ – “Pay the price”. Either we start paying the full price of our depredations on the planet’s ecological systems and natural resources, or our children and grandchildren will be paying the price in societal disruption, decline and possible collapse, with all its attendant misery, illness, injuries and premature deaths.

Paying the full price seems like a bargain to me, and certainly it will seem that way to our descendants, while failing to do so will be seen as a craven abandonment of future generations by our current so-called leaders.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

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

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

On Oct. 1, I will be joining hundreds of seniors at the B.C. legislature in Victoria to call for immediate and serious action on climate change

Dr. Trevor Hancock

10 September 2024

702 words

I was born in 1948, when the average annual atmospheric CO2 level was about 311 ppm. When I started writing this column in December 2014, average annual CO2 was 399 ppm; today it is 422 ppm. The impacts of these heightened CO2 levels, as well as increased levels of methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs), are already glaringly obvious.

According to NASA, the global temperature is about 1.2°C above the long-term average from 1951 to 1980, but about 1.4°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average. Globally, the World Meteorological Organization has reported, 2023 was the hottest year on record. Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth Observation Programme, reported this week that this summer has been the hottest on record, while the past 13 months have all been ones “in which the global-average surface air temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”

The Canadian Climate Institute notes: “Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average, and Canada’s Arctic is warming nearly four times as fast.” It goes on to note that climate change fuels heatwaves, which make wildfires worse – and that in turn causes increased illness and deaths from heat and smoke pollution.

And it’s only going to get worse. In fact, bizarrely – and unacceptably – the global commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 means that “the official plan for the planet is to keep making climate change worse well into the second half of this century”, as Chris Hatch wrote in his Zero Carbon column in Canada’s National Observer in June.

Yet as a leading climate action organization, 350.org, puts it (while acknowledging Dr. Kimberly Nicholas as the source): “It’s warming. It’s us. We’re sure. It’s bad. We can fix it.” Fixing it means not only stopping the inexorable rise in CO2 levels (and other GHGs) since the 1950s, but reversing it, bringing CO2 levels down to 350 ppm.

The name 350.org is a direct reference to the assertion by James Hansen – one of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists – and his colleagues in a 2008 paper that “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced . . . to at most 350 ppm.”

We passed that benchmark in 1988 and seemed destined to reach a disastrous 2 – 3 degrees of heating by the end of the century – when most of today’s infants will likely still be alive.

Which is why on October 1st – Canada’s National Seniors Day and the International Day of Older Persons – I will be joining hundreds of seniors in Victoria – and hopefully tens of thousands across Canada – to call for immediate and serious action on climate change that reflects both the immediacy and the severity of the challenge we face.

The event is organised by Seniors for Climate – an alliance of six seniors’ climate organizations – Suzuki Elders, Climate Action for Lifelong Learners (CALL), Grandmothers Act to Save the Planet (GASP), Climate Legacy, Seniors for Climate Action Now! (SCAN) and For Our Grandchildren (4RG) – see https://seniorsforclimate.org/.

Their agenda is straightforward, anchored in the theme that we need action on the climate emergency now: “Later is too late.” They want a stringent cap on emissions, followed by a phasing out of fossil fuels; a halt to the financial sector investing in fossil fuels, which accelerates climate breakdown, and a speeding up of the transition to renewable power and clean energy.

The event is a demonstration of the concern seniors have “about climate breakdown and our desire to rebuild a healthy environment for future generations.” It is thus a reflection of the growing concern for intergenerational equity that I have been writing about in recent weeks, a concern that will be highlighted next week at the UN Summit of the Future. The Summit will be adopting a Pact for the Future and a Declaration on Future Generations

The Victoria rally is at 2 PM on October 1^st at the BC Legislature. If you care about our children, grandchildren and generations yet unborn, be there to lend your presence and your voice to this vitally important issue.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

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

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

• Published as  “Environmental resilience requires robust governance at regional level”

While I would not argue for one large regional government, having 13 separate municipal governments for a region of 400,000 people seems excessive

Dr. Trevor Hancock

3 September 2024

701 words

Last week I noted the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), in its ‘Navigating New Horizons’ report, had made the case that “Cities and communities have an essential role in achieving sustainability transitions. They are often places of learning, innovation and creativity, enabling the potential for systemic change at the local level.”

The report goes on to note: “Strong cities and local communities that are supported by robust local leadership and governance are the bedrock of environmental resilience in a complex world.” What that might mean locally?

A good place to begin is with the need for robust local leadership and governance at the regional level. Back in March 2017 I wrote a column titled “Thirteen municipalities, but only one planet” – the title says it all! While I would not argue for one large regional government, having thirteen separate municipal governments for a region of 400,000 people seems excessive. Of course, the suggestion of amalgamating Victoria and Saanich, the two largest municipalities with half the regional population, while leaving all the others alone, makes no sense whatsoever.

Moreover, when a single municipality can disrupt a policy for its own parochial reasons, we lack robust government at the regional level. The most egregious example was when Langford, under its previous regime, set the municipal boundary as the urban containment boundary, thus negating the very idea of urban containment and encouraging urban sprawl.

Multiple police and fire departments and the lack of a regional transportation authority are other examples of a less-than-robust regional government. In the area of transportation, the CRD notes, “The current role of the CRD is limited to planning and policy support”, although the CRD is considering changes to governance that include a possible transportation authority.

So the first step towards a new social contract might be to consider whether the present system of governance in this region is fit for purpose in the 21^st century. Governance, of course, is more than just government, so any such process should look at a broad-based approach that brings together the public, private, labour, non-profit, academic and faith leadership in some form of regional leadership council. It seems to me the Victoria Foundation, in partnership with the CRD and others, would be the natural convenor of such a Council, as they already bring all these sectors together.

Such a Council, which would also need to represent the diversity of the region’s population, could lead the process to engage widely with the community to craft a vision of the region as a place where all people thrive and reach their maximum potential within the ecological boundaries of the planet. Part of that process should be a consideration of what reforms of municipal government and governance – both in structure and in process – are needed to operate effectively in the 21^st century and to pursue that vision.

Some direction on the changes needed in the process of governance may be found in a 2020 report from Nesta, the UK’s independent innovation agency, on new operating models for local government. The project brought together “practitioners and partners from twenty pioneering local authorities” that were working “upstream of service delivery, focusing on creating the economic, social and community conditions that enable citizens to thrive.” Faced with “a decade of austerity-driven budget cuts from central government”, they had to innovate and adapt.

The report notes the common features of these new ways of working, the first of which is “A renewed sense of purposeorientated around thriving communities and places.” This is coupled with a focus on moving upstream, dealing with problems before they become crises and recognizing the complexity and inter-connectedness of issues; a collaborative approach that is systemic and long-term and that sees local government as a platform for the action of citizens and partners; and a willingness to experiment and adapt.

This latter point requires utilizing an asset-based community development (ABCD) approach in building relationships with the community and key partners, recognizing and working to harness the knowledge, skills, experience and capacities of all segments of the community. Indeed, “Many councils have worked to develop a new, informal ‘contract’ with citizens, reframing their mutual responsibilities”, a local expression of the new social contract the UNEP report proposes.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

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

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

It was local governments that led the charge — well ahead of the federal and provincial governments — on regulating smoking in public places and in taking action on climate change, to name but two examples.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

27 August 2024

702 words

Recently I have been discussing the large-scale changes we need to make in the face of the eight critical shifts identified in the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report ‘Navigating New Horizons’.  Those changes are a focus on intergenerational equity; a new social contract that reinforces shared values about how we relate not only to each other but to nature; and focusing on and measuring wellbeing rather than just the economy.

While this may all seem large-scale and global – as indeed it is, given this is a UN report – the final critical shift identified is towards polycentric and diffused governance. In discussing this, the report identifies a ‘signal of change’ that brings it all back to the local level: Local, network-driven resilience.  “Frustrated by the failures of national governments and enabled by digital technologies”, the report notes, “networks of local communities become the primary driving force behind global actions to increase resilience.”

The report goes on to note: “Cities and communities have an essential role in achieving sustainability transitions. They are often places of learning, innovation and creativity, enabling the potential for systemic change at the local level.”

It is worth remembering that while there is only one federal government, ten provincial and three territorial governments, there are over 5,000 municipalities in Canada, according to Statistics Canada. This means there are many more opportunities for innovation and creativity at the local level, something that I have seen and been part of in my public health career.

It was local governments that led the charge – well ahead of the federal and provincial governments – on regulating smoking in public places and in taking action on climate change, to name but two examples.

Part of the advantage local governments have, to quote the Vinyl Café, is that they may not be big, but they are small. This often means they lack resources and have to do more with less, but that can trigger creative responses. Moreover, local governments, because they are smaller, can be more agile – their bureaucracies are smaller.

In addition, local governments are closer to the citizenry, and both the civic servants and political representatives and their families and friends are likely to be living in the place where their decisions have effect, which may have a beneficial impact on their decision-making.

This is not to say that local governments are always agile, efficient and effective, just that the potential is there. Nonetheless, the UNEP report talks about “promoting agile, adaptive governance, which puts an emphasis on empowering communities and fostering innovation across society, while using long-term targets and visions to guide these dispersed processes.”

So what would that mean locally? Well, a place to begin, I suggest, is to create a shared vision of our shared future. What would the Greater Victoria Region be like if collectively we lived within our planet’s ecological boundaries while ensuring that everyone thrives and achieves the fullest potential they are capable of? If we could jointly craft such a vision – a vision of a ‘One Planet’ wellbeing community – that could inspire decades of work together.

I know this can work, because I have seen it, and indeed have helped make it happen. I recall in particular the vision workshop I facilitated in 1991 for Woolwich Healthy Communities (WHC), a rural community of 23,000 people in the region of Waterloo. Thirty-three years later WHC remains active, inspiring and coordinating a wide variety of activities focused on quality of life and the local environment.

Crafting such a vision will require a joint effort of all sectors of our community – public, private and civil society organisations and citizens from all walks of life. Given the UNEP report’s focus on intergenerational equity, it will be particularly important to ensure young people have a strong voice. After all, it is their future we are talking about.

But creating a shared vision together is just the beginning; it can be a model for “the active participation of individuals and groups in the decision-making processes that affect their lives” that the UNEP report calls for. 

Next week I will look at what a new social contract might mean locally, one that includes nature, and what it means to measure wellbeing locally.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

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

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

Co-operation has been key to the success of the human species

Dr. Trevor Hancock

20 August 2024

701 words

In addition to a commitment to intergenerational equity, which I discussed last week, the recent UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report ‘Navigating New Horizons’ also calls for “a new social contract reinforcing shared values that unite us rather than divide us” and “a new global emphasis on wellbeing metrics rather than pure economic growth.” What would that look like?

The report notes that a social contract is the web of trust and reciprocity that binds different parts of society together. It is hardly a new concept – the report notes it is “found in cultures and religious traditions across the world” – and is rooted in the fact that humans are social animals. One of the things that has made us such a successful species is our social cooperation.

In a 2016 commentary on the Leakey Foundation website, Stuart West, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Oxford, discussed the evolutionary benefits of cooperation. In part, it is because of the benefits of “reciprocity, where people are more likely to help individuals that have helped them.” Another factor is that cooperation helps the group survive because they can hunt and forage more efficiently and defend themselves from attack – whether by predators or other humans.

Indeed, West notes, competition and conflict between groups can also lead to cooperation within groups. We are all familiar with this, it is used – sometimes maliciously – in a variety of social contexts, including sports, business, politics and war. “However,”, notes the UNEP report, “this social contract is being ignored in many places of the world, where short-term profit and individual success have become dominant, to the detriment of most of the world.”

One key part of a new social contract, the report suggests, is to engage a more diverse group of stakeholders and enable “the active participation of individuals and groups in the decision-making processes that affect their lives.”  This needs to begin at the local level, from where it can filter up. It requires greater transparency and accountability from leaders and the use of tools such as digital platforms, citizens’ assemblies or participatory budgeting.

A second key element, closely related to the first, is to give young people a stronger voice. After all, it is their future we are talking about. Youth assemblies or youth councils – the City of Victoria has one – are a place to begin. But we need to expand this to engage youth in helping to design the communities and the society that they will be living in for decades to come. These are important ways to demonstrate inter-generational equity.

Both these elements can also contribute to another priority identified in the report, namely “promoting agile, adaptive governance”, particularly at the local level.  I will return to this  in a couple of weeks, when I look at what all this means for the Greater Victoria Region.

A third important approach is “the idea that the social contract should include a focus on humanity’s relationship with the environment.” The idea that a social contract should expand to include our connection with nature is not new to Indigenous communities, where a relationship with the Earth and with other species – ‘all our relations’ – is a central aspect of their beliefs and way of life. Indeed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has stated: “Reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, from an Aboriginal perspective, also requires reconciliation with the natural world.”

In addition to a new social contract, the UNEP report proposes we need a new economic framework with an emphasis on wellbeing metrics rather than just on GDP. Governments at all levels will need to put planetary health and human wellbeing at the heart of their economic policies and budgets.

This new economic system involves expanding our concept of capital to include natural, social and human capital – also known as ‘inclusive wealth’. It also involves “a fundamental reimagining of the role of businesses and markets.” Instead of being narrowly focused on short term profits, they need to become “engines for prosperity, social cohesion and healthy environments.”

Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, “the demand for alternative economic and wellbeing measures was strongest among young people”, the report notes; yet another reason to adopt an inter-generational equity approach.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

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

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

Think how the presence of such an act might affect the election platforms of the parties in the Oct. 19 B.C. provincial election.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

13 August 2024

699 words

The UN Environment Programme’s report ‘Navigating New Horizons’ is sub-titled “A global foresight report on planetary health and human wellbeing.” In her Foreword, UNEP Executive Director Inger Anderson makes an important distinction: “the point of this report is not to predict the future [but] to foresee the future.”

The difference is important. “Prediction is passive”, she notes, “it means locking in a vision of the future. Foresight is about imagining the future and then looking at how to change it.” So having identified eight critical shifts that threaten to disrupt planetary health and human wellbeing, the report turns to suggesting solutions.

“Humanity”, the report states, “has a stark and urgent choice to make: continue to destabilise planetary health and risk losing humanity’s life support system, or build a future that embraces equity, addresses the underlying drivers of environmental degradation and achieves sustainable development. What humanity decides now will shape the world that future generations will inherit.”

That latter point reflects one of the key changes the report calls for; we must adopt the principle of “intergenerational equity, which is concerned with generations not yet born.” This principle is embedded in the very definition of sustainable development, created in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of futuregenerations to meet their own needs.”

So we need to consider the needs of future generations in every policy and in every corporate decision we make. This is not a new idea; The report points to the concept of ‘seven generations’  thinking, “attributed to Native American Haudenosaunee (Iroquois)” and other Indigenous philosophies.

One practical way to do this has been demonstrated by the Welsh National Assembly. In 2015 they passed the Well-being of Future Generations Act. Among other things, the Act establishes the position of Future Generations Commissioner and establishes “a legally-binding common purpose – the seven well-being goals – for national government, local government, local health boards and other specified public bodies.”

Under the Act, these public bodies “must set and publish well-being objectives . . . then take action to make sure they meet the objectives they set.” Moreover, each government Minister must set national indicators, establish and regularly update ‘milestones’ (objectives) and publish an annual progress report.

The role of the Commissioner is to “to act as a guardian for the interests of future generations in Wales”, The Commissioner can provide advice to the public bodies listed in the Act on how to achieve the well-being goals, carry out research, conduct reviews of the work of the public bodies and make recommendations for action.

In addition, the Commissioner “must publish, a year before a Senedd [National Assembly] election, a report containing the Commissioner’s assessment of the improvements public bodies should make to achieve the well-being goals.”

With a provincial election coming up October 19^th, think how useful it would be to have such an Act and a Commissioner’s report. How would the B.C. government stack up? What would the report say about their commitment to expanding LNG exports and the associated greenhouse gas emissions? Their failure to fully implement the report of the Old Growth Strategic Review and fully protect old growth forests? Their failure to bring in a Species at Risk Act, as they promised to do years ago?

Think how the presence of such an Act might affect the election platforms of the parties. How could the Liberals (sorry, BC United) and the Conservatives put forward platforms essentially committed to ‘business as usual’, when we know this leads to damage to both planetary health and the wellbeing of future generations.

But we don’t have such an Act. It’s time we did. So if you share my concern with the direction we are headed, for the wellbeing of today’s young people in the decades ahead and for generations yet to come, I suggest you insist that all candidates and parties commit to bringing in a Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. Your children, grandchildren and their descendants will thank you for it. 

Next week, I will look at two other key solutions the report recommends; a new social contract and a new global emphasis on wellbeing metrics.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

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

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

• Published as  “Misinformation, declining trust and polarization undermines democracy”

Misinformation and disinformation, increasingly powered by AI, are identified as the most severe global risk over the next two years by the World Economic Forum

Dr. Trevor Hancock

6 August 2024

697 words

Last week I summarised five of the eight critical shifts identified in a recent UN Environment. Programme (UNEP) report, ‘Navigating New Horizons’, which is “a global foresight report on planetary health and human wellbeing.” I also touched on a sixth critical shift; persistent and widening inequalities.

This week I will dig deeper into this sixth challenge, as well as two remaining challenges that are really about governance: Misinformation, declining trust and polarization (to which growing inequalities doubtless contribute) and polycentricity and the diffusion of governance.

The UNEP report is blunt: “Immense inequalities of income and wealth intensify within and between countries worldwide.” For example, “while the top 10 per cent account for more than three quarters of total global wealth, the bottom 50 per cent of the world population own just 2 per cent or almost nothing.” Moreover, “between 1995 and 2021, the top 1 per cent captured 38 per cent of the global increase in total wealth, while the bottom 50 per cent again accounted for just 2 per cent.”

In particular, the report notes, “inequalities of wealth and income lead to ecological inequities.” with marginalised populations experiencing “unequal access to clear air and water, fertile soil, stable climate and vibrant biodiversity” – and that in turn exacerbates forced migration as places become uninhabitable due to ecological changes.

This level of inequality can only exacerbate polarisation and distrust, the seventh critical shift we face. It does so in two ways: First, “this growing concentration of wealth . . .  confers huge economic and political power on a tiny elite.” But even worse, it contributes to “social stratification and undermining public institutions and social solidarity”, thus undermining confidence in governments.

In addition, and further contributing to the loss of trust and faith in governments, these inequalities are a failure of governance: “income inequality is rising due to unequal access to education, limited employment opportunities and inadequate social services, as well as regressive tax policies”, the report notes. 

Turning then to the seventh critical shift – misinformation, declining trust and polarization – the report notes: “Misinformation and disinformation, increasingly powered by AI, is identified as the most severe global risk over the next two years in the latest Global Risk Report of the World Economic Forum (2024), undermining social cohesion, trust in institutions and fuelling political divides.”

This situation is due in part to the decline of mainstream media, “further undermining the ability to provide accurate news”, as well as the deliberate campaigns to undermine science, especially climate science, coming from some political and corporate sectors. The resulting weakening of trust in science undermines democratic institutions, the report notes, making it “much harder to design and deliver effective policies to tackle societal challenges, including the climate crisis.”  

The final critical shift is a diffusion of governance, partly because of “a recognition that national governments have been unable to address global sustainability challenges—either operating individually or multilaterally.” But also governments have “allowed some relocation of power and responsibilities” in the face of a plethora of non-state actors that have been engaged as “agents of change.”

Such diffusion of power, creating a more polycentric governance system, is not necessarily a bad thing if it is genuinely a sharing of power and not just an abdication of responsibility. But it does require an assurance of “very high levels of transparency, accountability and integrity”, which is not often apparent.

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

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

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

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

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

• Published as “Water scarcity, forced displacement among challenges we face”

Humans face multiple challenges beyond climate change, from resource scarcity to rising armed conflict and mass forced displacement.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

30 July 2024

703 words

The UN Environment Programme’s new report, Navigating New Horizons, produced in partnership with the International Science Council, is not easy reading. It’s not just that it is a dense 100-page document, but because it paints a grim picture of the challenges we face. However, towards the end, the report notes a shift that is both hopeful and relevant to local action, as I will discuss in a couple of weeks’ time.

But first, what of the future challenges? Unsurprisingly, given it is a report from the UN’s environment agency, there is a strong focus on the environmental challenges we face. But there are also important social and governance challenges, and all these challenges are not only growing and speeding up, but converging and “appear to be synchronizing”, becoming a polycrisis.

The first challenge is the shifting relationship between humans and the Earth, such that “continuing environmental degradation and systemic shifts are pushing natural ecosystems and humans to limits.” The UN speaks of a ‘triple planetary crisis’ of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. In addition to the well-known challenges of climate change, it has been estimated that by 2050 less than 10 percent of the Earth’s land area will remain free from significant human impact, while “humans will have eliminated 38–46 per cent of all biodiversity”.

Pollution is a particular concern, with “350,000 chemicals and substances listed for production and use”. Moreover, of the thousands of chemicals “registered as being toxic, or persistent, by a few countries . . . the vast majority have not been measured in the environment or in humans.” As a result “the hidden health and ecological costs [are] likely underestimated”, and are particularly serious for infants and children.

A second and related challenge is scarcity of and competition for critical resource. While oil, gas and, more recently, rare earth minerals have gotten a lot of attention, more worrying is scarcity of such fundamental determinants of wellbeing, indeed survival, as food, water and land. “Climate change exacerbates water scarcity”, which not only damages food production but will “increase the likelihood of conflicts.”

Indeed, a new era of conflict is a third challenge: “Armed conflict and violence are on the rise.” Not only are there “fifty-nine state-based conflicts across 34 countries . . . higher than any time since 1946”, but “increasingly, conflicts are propagated and sustained by the engagement of non-state actors, political militias, domestic criminal groups and terrorist organizations.” And as we see only too well, drones, satellite imagery, AI and other technological changes are changing the nature of conflict.

Moreover, “armed conflicts consistently result in environmental degradation and destruction . . . triggering food and water insecurity, loss of livelihoods and biodiversity depletion.” These impacts are exacerbated by “the weaponization of access to water, food, energy and critical infrastructure.”

These changes contribute to a fourth challenge: Mass forced displacement. “Whether due to conflict, climate change or other external pressures”, the result is that home becomes uninhabitable, so people have “little choice other than to move.” Today 1 in 69 people around 115 million – are forcibly displaced, but the International Organization for Migration reports that that “environmental impacts and climate change alone . . . will force more than 216 million people across six continents to be on the move within their countries by 2050.” Women and children are disproportionately harmed in these situations.

Another key challenge is the digital transformation, including social media, AI and other technologies, the impact of which it is hard to estimate. On the one hand, “these innovations hold tremendous promise to accelerate improvements across various systems, from energy to mobility to food and beyond.” But we have also all seen the downsides of some of this technology, and the ability to manage the technology in the face of rapid change driven by private sector initiatives “looks increasingly difficult”.

A sixth challenge is persistent and widening inequalities, both within and between countries, which many of the other critical shifts only make worse. I will explore this challenge in more detail next week along with the two remaining critical shifts, which relate mainly to governance challenges, before starting to look at the potential for positive responses and the implications for local action. 

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

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

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

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

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

Dr. Trevor Hancock

23 July 2024

703 words

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

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

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