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

Local thinking and action on global issues

Dr. Trevor Hancock

16 January 2017

702 words

“Think globally, act locally” was one of the enduring slogans of the 1970’s environmental movement. But I believe that we need to think locally as well as act locally, and thus I am leading the organisation of a series of local Conversations on Victoria as a One Planet region, a concept I first suggested in my August 10^th column last year. The purpose is to explore the idea and begin the process of imagining a future for our community where we have a high quality of life and a low ecological footprint.

But this is no mere academic exercise, it has a very practical application. We are entering the Anthropocene, a new geologic epoch created by human activity. We have become a force to rival nature; in one telling line in a short video – Welcome to the Anthropocene – produced for a 2012 international conference in London, the narrator notes “we move more sediment and rock annually than all natural processes, such as erosion and rivers”.

On top of that, we are changing the climate, have made a hole in the ozone layer, manage three-quarters of the land outside the ice-sheets, and have started a sixth Great Extinction. Our rate of resource use and pollution is so high that if everyone on Earth lived the way we do, we would need three or four new planets to meet our demands.

We cannot blithely continue on like this. Nor can we say to the rest of the world – sorry, you must take less so that we can take more; it would be unjust and they will not accept that. So clearly we need to learn to live within the limits of the one small planet that is our home.

I recently came across Bioregional, a non-profit consultancy based in the UK. They have mainly been working with developers on ‘One Planet’ developments; Dockside Green, as orginally conceived, would have fitted right in. But more recently, some cities have been developing and adopting One Planet plans; of particular interest to us is Brighton and Hove, on the south coast of England, which has a population about the same as ours. And last Friday in Vancouver there was an event to begin to explore ‘How do we become a One Planet city?’ So our series of Conversations are right on target.

But getting from here to there will not be easy, because the changes we need are massive, transformative – and they have to happen quickly. However people are not going to willingly and easily make the changes that are needed if they see them as harmful. That is the dilemma – and the challenge – we face. Can we imagine and then describe a positive vision of what our region would look like if it had a high Happy Planet Index? And more to the point, what would our society be like, how would we reconceive our economy, what are the value shifts we would have to bring about?

Our Conversations, then, clearly need to be as much about philosophy, the humanities, the arts and the social sciences as technology and the natural sciences. We will need need visionaries, hope and imagination, innovation and new forms of entrepreneurship that make a profit while building natural, social and human capital.

These free Conversations start Monday, January 23^rd from 5 – 7 PM at the Robert Bateman Centre, 470 Belleville Street and continue weekly for 5 weeks. The opening Conversation will lay out some basic ideas and discuss the estimation of Victoria’s ecological footprint, an essential step in measuring the HPI. Over the following weeks we will discuss the Indigenous perspective on these issues (Jan 30) and what a One Planet energy system (Feb 6), transportation system (Feb 13) and food system (Feb 22^nd) would look like.

This will culminate in a UVic IdeaFest event on Saturday March 11^th at New Horizons in James Bay. But already ideas are being hatched for more Conversations: What is the role of the arts in contributing to this transformation? What do the various faith communities have to say about a One Planet way of life? What sort of economy fits a one Planet region- and many more issues. The Conversation is just beginning.

© Trevor Hancock, 2017

 

Making money by creating health

Dr. Trevor Hancock

9 January 2017

700 words

Twenty years ago I attended the World Health Organization’s 4^th global conference on health promotion. This was at a time when neo-conservative influences were pushing WHO to be more receptive to private sector funding, so the pharmaceutical industry was there as a sponsor. But this got me thinking: What could their interest be in health promotion, given that if we did our job right – if everyone lived in good health to a ripe old age and then just dropped dead – they would be out of business?

Their interest, I supposed, was that they would be able to sell us medications that would either prevent disease or control it, enabling us to live longer, healthier lives. But there is not necessarily a lot of money to be made in preventing a disease, whereas chronic diseases are a god-send to the pharmaceutical industry; we can be on their medications for decades, a steady and reliable source of income.

So fundamentally, I concluded, we did not share the same bottom line. Their bottom line interest was a long life in chronic ill health, while ours was a long life free of illness. Yet they were purporting to be our partners, just as soft drink companies want to be our partners on physical activity and sporting events such as the Olympics, even though their drinks are very unhealthy.

And that got me thinking: Who should public health professionals and organisations partner with? Who does make money out of good health? So I wrote an article called ‘Caveat partner’ – beware of your partner – in which I tried to figure that out. Sadly, I concluded there were many ways to make money out of bad health, but not so many ways to profit from good health.

First there are the corporations that profit by selling us stuff that sickens or injures and ultimately kills us, from tobacco to junk food, alcohol to asbestos. Add to that the fact that corporations regularly complain about and try to undermine or avoid what they see as unnecessary regulations, many of which are there to protect us or the environment; think of the resistance on the part of car makers over the years to new safety regulations, or of a wide variety of industries to pollution controls or occupational health and safety measures.

A third category of unhealthy corporate actors are those who pay their workers as little as possible, making it hard for them to live a decent life, or move their production to countries that have low wages and lax environmental and occupational health laws and enforcement, so they can maximise profit.

But I did identify three categories of business that share our bottom line, who make more money when the population is healthier. First are industries whose profits depend upon a healthy population and environment, including the life and health insurance industries; if we pay them premiums and don’t use their products, that would presumably be profitable. Also, the leisure, recreation and tourism industries, since we generally need to be healthy to use their services.

Second are what I call the real producers of health; the people who build our homes, grow our food, keep our water safe and our environments clean, educate our kids, keep our communities safe and produce all the other goods and services that are the roots of good health. Of course, they don’t necessarily do these things in a healthy way (there are lots of unhealthy homes and unhealthy foods, for example), but they could.

Finally, at least in theory, the entire private sector – and society as a whole – profits from good health. If people are healthy they will likely be more productive and more creative, they will not miss work or retire early due to ill health or stress, they will remain independent, pay taxes and contribute in many other ways to society.

So we need taxes, incentives and regulations that both punish the private sector financially, ensuring they lose money when they harm health, and reward them financially for actions that improve health. We need to make health creation profitable, and we need a new breed of health-enhancing entrepreneurs to do this, a topic I will explore in future columns.

© Trevor Hancock, 2017