Reclaim the economy for people and the planet

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

We too often prioritize the economy over people and the planet, putting both in service of the economy.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

19 January 2026

699 words

As readers of this column know, I often refer to a piece of wisdom put forth by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in 2014: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work any other way round.” The root of many of our problems, of course, is that we keep trying to make it work the other way round. Our current society and economy too often prioritise the economy over people and the planet, putting both in service of the economy.

But as the WWF notes, it is society that creates the economy, which is – or should be – a tool to improve the wellbeing of all, now and in the future, while also ensuring we remain within planetary boundaries. That, not coincidentally, is pretty much the definition of a Wellbeing society put forward by the World Health Organization.

So it is not surprising that the second of five action areas identified in WHO’s Geneva Charter for Wellbeing is to design an equitable economy that serves human development within planetary and local ecological boundaries – what increasingly is being called a ‘wellbeing economy’.

Which brings me to ‘Reclaim the Economy Week’, which runs from January 26th to February 1st. Organised by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and Earth4All, two global organisations, the week focuses on two of the largest problems we face: “Our economies are driving inequality and environmental devastation.”

With respect to inequality, the latest World Inequality Report (WIR) noted: “Inequality has long been a defining feature of the global economy, but by 2025, it has reached levels that demand urgent attention.” The concentration of wealth has become extreme and it “is not only persistent, but it is also accelerating”.

In Canada, Statistics Canada reported in July 2025, “The income gap reached a record high in the first quarter of 2025; the highest income households gained from investments, while the lowest income households’ wages declined.”

Such inequality is not just about poverty, it has significant social implications, notes the WIR: “it reshapes democracies, fragmenting coalitions and eroding political consensus.” Importantly, they concluded: “These divides are not inevitable. They are the outcome of political and institutional choices.”

Extreme wealth also has ecological implications. A January 9th news release from Oxfam found that someone from the top 1 percent of the world’s population used their fair share of the world’s carbon budget – the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while staying within 1.5 degrees of warming – in the first 10 days of the year. It would take an individual from the poorest half of humanity three years to generate an equivalent amount.

These impacts of greed apply across all aspects of the natural systems that are our life support system. And yet we continue to urge economic growth, extol conspicuous consumption and market a high-consumption lifestyle.

The growing ecological disaster we face, driven by these forces, comes with a staggering economic impact, measured in the trillions of dollars, as the UN Environment Programme’s just-released report ‘Global Environmental Outlook – 7’ report makes clear:

  • The global cost of climate-induced extreme weather events in the past 20 years is estimated at US$143 billion per year . . . Costs have increased exponentially over the last five years, and cumulative costs from 2014–2023 are estimated at US$2 trillion, affecting 1.6 billion people.
  • Globally, the degradation of ecosystems will lead to a loss of services worth between US$10 trillion and US$44 trillion annually.
  • Globally, the estimated annual costs of land degradation are large, but uncertain, and range between US$18 billion and US$20 trillion.
  • The effect on global food production is a key concern, with a potential reduction of up to 33.7 million tons and a corresponding 30 per cent increase in world food prices by 2040.

Small wonder the report’s sub-title is “Why investing in Earth now can lead to a trillion-dollar benefit for all” – and actually, that should be ‘multi-trillion’.

Just as poverty and inequality are not inevitable, but “are the outcome of political and institutional choices”, so too is ecological devastation. As the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and Earth4All state, it is time “to unite to demand an economy that puts people and planet first.”

© Trevor Hancock, 2026

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

The problem is income inadequacy, not affordability

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

The bottom half of the population has seen its share of national income dropping, while the top one per cent’s share has grown dramatically.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

22 September 2025

702 words

Food Banks Canada just released its annual report on poverty in Canada. Key findings are that one in ten Canadians are living in poverty, over 40 percent are paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing (which is the Statistics Canada definition of unaffordable housing), and 40 percent are feeling worse off compared to last year.

Of course the core business of food banks is hunger and food insecurity. The latter is defined by Statistics Canada as being unable to or uncertain of the ability to acquire or consume an adequate diet or sufficient food in socially acceptable ways. A May 2025 report from Statistics Canada stated that in 2023 one in four people in Canada – and almost half of people in one-parent families – reported they were living in food insecure households.

That was a roughly 15 percent increase over 2022, and the third annual increase in a row. Moreover, most of that increase was among those -19 out of 25 percent – who experienced moderate to severe food insecurity. This situation has led a number of cities in Ontario to declare food insecurity emergencies. The CEO of Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank noted in a CBC interview that “we need to feed more than one in 10 Torontonians.”

This is happening, we should remind ourselves, in one of the richest countries in the world.

Often, this situation is presented as an issue of affordability; food, housing and other basic needs are just too expensive. But while that is true, there is another way to look at it, as Valerie Tarasuk – a prominent Canadian food researcher at the University of Toronto – notes in that same CBC interview: “I think we have a fundamental problem with income that needs to be addressed.”

That fundamental problem with income is not new. In its 2022 report the World Inequality Lab noted: “Income and wealth inequalities have been on the rise nearly everywhere since the 1980s, following a series of deregulation and liberalization programs which took different forms in different countries.”

What they mean, of course, is the adoption by Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA of neoliberal economic policies that were then adopted more widely. That is true of Canada too, as the Lab’s report on Canadamakes clear: “Income inequality in Canada increased significantly from 1982 until the mid-2000s.”

Between the Second World War and the mid-1980s the bottom half of the Canadian population had around 20 – 22 percent of Canada’s pre-tax income, while the top ten percent had a bit under 30 percent and the top one percent had between 6 and 7 percent. By 2005 that was dramatically different: The bottom half of the population received just 17 percent of pre-tax income, the top ten percent had reached 38 percent and the top one percent got 14 percent.

In other words, the bottom half of the population – half, note – saw their share of national income decline nearly one fifth, while the top one percent more than doubled their share. Since then, the report notes, “income inequality has decreased slightly although it remains far above the levels observed in the early 1980s.”

This inequality was worsened because while pretty much everyone paid between 40 and 44 percent of their income in taxes overall in 2022, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported last year, the 90-95th percentile paid only 37 percent and the 95-99th percentile paid just 34 percent – less than the lowest ten percent, who paid 35 percent. Shockingly the top one percent paid a mere 24 percent of their income in total taxes.

The 2022 World Inequality Report made a vitally important point about this situation. Noting there are significant differences in the extent of the growth of inequality between different countries they concluded “inequality is not inevitable, it is a political choice.”

So it is up to us. Do we want to perpetuate the poverty, hunger and unaffordable housing situation for low-income Candians? Or do we want to go back to the decades after the Second World War when the rich paid their share and the bottom half took a larger share of the income?

© Trevor Hancock, 2025

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

Our ‘ignore-ant’ elites blindly adhere to ‘business as usual’

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Many of our so-called leaders don’t want to change because they get so much benefit — wealth, power, status — from the way things are

Dr. Trevor Hancock

21 May 2024

700 words

My colleague Paul Kershaw is a Professor of Public Health at UBC and founder of Generation Squeeze, a “Think and Change Tank” that promotes wellbeing for all generations. It does so “by turning evidence into action and rejuvenating democracy to protect what is sacred for younger and future generations: a healthy childhood, home and planet.” He has been very effective in raising issues of concern and getting public policy changed.

Recently we have been discussing the content of a session we are planning on planetary health and a wellbeing society at the Victoria Forum this August. In the process of that discussion, Paul wrote:

“I doubt we need a session that makes the case we have crossed planetary boundaries, or that wellbeing frameworks matter, or that Indigenous knowledge is critical to thinking sustainably over generations.” 

A reasonable point; one would like to think these issues are already well understood, at least in principle. But he then made the case that – sadly – we do indeed need such a session, by adding: “Except that the governments and corporations that drive our economies and societies are not behaving as if they have heard or understand this.”

Now this is from someone who is well steeped in public policy and well connected to the policy-making process and to policy-makers. So when he says that our government and corporate leadership is not paying attention to these important issues, it worries me.

What they are not hearing or understanding is really very simple: We only have one planet, and its natural ecosystems are the source of all life – not just humanity but every single living thing. And yet our demands considerably exceed the biocapacity and resources of the Earth.

We behave as if we have and can use the resources of several planets. Indeed, the more bizarrely delusional of us actually seem to believe we can and should move to another planet – presumably so we can repeat the process there!

But back here on Earth, where we actually live, we have crossed six of nine suggested planetary boundaries and are approaching two others, one of which is climate change.

Now it’s hard to believe that governments and corporations are not hearing or understanding this; indeed, I am sure they are. But what Paul is saying is that they are not behaving as if they have heard or understood what is going on. They are practising what Elizabeth Ellsworth, in a 1997 book, called ‘ignore-ance’ – “an active dynamic of negation, an active refusal of information”.

I can imagine several reasons that lead to this inability to face reality and act accordingly. In responding to Paul I suggested possible reasons for this ignore-ance: It may be that many of our leaders – and indeed many people in general – don’t believe it is really that bad, or can’t easily face the implications. Or perhaps people believe that somehow someone, somewhere, will come up with a technological fix that will allow us to carry on much as we are.

But I suspect that for many of our so-called leaders, they don’t want to change because they get so much benefit – wealth, power, status – from the way things are. And therein lies the nub of our problem; self-interested blind adherence to ‘business as usual’, to an economic system and underlying core values that plainly work against our long-term interests.

The result is an inability or unwillingness to play a leadership role in the massive and rapid transformation needed to stave off ecological decline, even collapse. And when ecosystems decline or collapse, so too do the communities and societies embedded within them, and the economies they create.

As the old adage has it, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. And since this government and corporate elite has shown itself unwilling to or incapable of addressing the problem, it clearly IS the problem.

But it is not just the behaviour of our elites, the problem is more profound than that. They are merely reflecting and acting upon a set of deep cultural values that are unfit for purpose in the 21st century, as I start to discuss 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