Let’s talk about becoming a Wellbeing society

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

Our economic and social system is trashing our environment, undermining our health, and creating large health inequalities.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

18 August 2025

702 words

Last month I noted a growing recognition that the many challenges we face, from environmental degradation to concentration of wealth, structural inequality and exclusion, are a product of the economic and other societal systems we have created. If that is the case, we clearly need to radically change the systems that are the source of the problems. As Saul Klein and Arti Freeman stated (Times Colonist, July 11th), we need to “envision new ways of organizing our economies, our democracies, and our relationships with one another and the planet.”

So how do we do that? That is work I have been doing, one way or another, for decades. My work on population and planetary health has led me to a deep understanding of how our economic and social system is trashing our environment, undermining the most fundamental determinants of our health, while creating large health inequalities. As a health futurist, I have led projects from the local to the global about envisioning a preferable future and figuring out how to get there. My work in public health and health promotion has had a strong focus on how we create healthy cities and communities.

Nowadays I am especially focused on how we create what the World Health Organization calls a Wellbeing society. To that end, I am the Interim Convenor of an emerging national health sector coalition that is working both to address the health implications of crossing multiple planetary boundaries and on the creation of a Wellbeing society as a way of addressing this and other elements of the global polycrisis we face.

One approach we are impressed by is the Welsh Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, the first and so far the only such legislation in the world. The Act requires “public bodies in Wales to think about the long-term impact of their decisions, to work better with people, communities and each other, and to prevent persistent problems such as poverty, health inequalities and climate change”.

It also establishes the position of a Commissioner for Future Generations as an independent officer of the legislature whose job it is to protect and promote the needs of future generations, report on progress, make recommendations and provide advice.

This laudable legislation came about because Wales, when it was created in 1998 as a country within the sovereign stateof the UK, put in its founding constitution an explicit duty to promote sustainable development.

This led, in 2007, to the public recognition that “we need to cut Wales’ ecological footprint by 75 percent to live within our fair share of the planet’s resources”. Then in 2009 the then First Minister announced a new vision, One Wales, One Planet, followed in 2011 by a Bill “embedding sustainable development as the central organising principle in all actions across government and public bodies”.

But what I find particularly important was that in 2014 there was a large national conversation about The Wales We Want “involving thousands of people sharing their views on what would improve their communities”. It was “one big involvement exercise – by the people, for the people”, and it was seen as crucial to supporting the passage of the wellbeing of Future Generations Act, according to the current Future Generations Commissioner.

Which is why I am proposing the creation of what I call a People’s Commission on Wellbeing, modeled on the People’s Food Commission of the late 1970s. Such a Commission should travel across the country – both in person and virtually – engaging people in discussing the Canada they want for their children and grandchildren, crafting a new national vision and considering how to get there.

The Commission needs to be based on the public recognition of the scale and severity of the ecological and social challenges we face – something that our governments have not yet done. But it also needs to identify the positive local actions already underway.

By bringing people together locally it would solidify and strengthen local networks and local action, while also weaving a national Wellbeing Society Network. Hopefully, it would also lead to the passage of Wellbeing of Future Generations Acts federally and across Canada and the creation of Future Generations Commissioners. What a worthwhile legacy that would be!

© 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

Making Canada better means focusing on wellbeing, happiness and quality of life

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

  • Published as ‘Canada could learn from Nordic countries about well-being.’)

Dr. Trevor Hancock

20 May 2025

702 words

It is to be hoped that the new cabinet committee on quality of life and well-being will look at lessons to be learned from the World Happiness Report, and in particular from the Nordic countries.

The 2025 World Happiness Report, with data from 2024, was released in March. As the 2023 Report noted, people “increasingly think of well-being as the ultimate good”, and “more and more people have come to believe that our success as countries should be judged by the happiness of our people.” That report went on to discuss how to measure a nation’s happiness and the factors that lead to increased happiness.

At its simplest, the authors noted, “the natural way to measure a nation’s happiness is to ask a nationally representative sample of people how satisfied they are with their lives these days.” More particularly, they add, countries will only achieve high levels of overall life satisfaction “if its people are also pro-social, healthy, and prosperous.” (By ‘pro-social’, they mean “the outward- facing virtues of friendship and citizenship.”)

But they cautioned that it is not enough to just look at average happiness, but at who has low life satisfaction (or misery) and “to consider well-being and environmental policy dimensions jointly in order to ensure the happiness of future generations.” The way to prevent misery and protect the quality of life of future generations, they suggest, is to establish and implement human rights, including the rights of future generations.

The 2023 report noted that the key factors that “explain the differences in well-being around the world, both within and among countries, . . . include physical and mental health, human relationships (in the family, at work and in the community), income and employment, character virtues including pro-sociality and trust, social support, personal freedom, lack of corruption, and effective government.”

Notably missing from this list is the environment, but nobody who has been following the growing crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, and the links between poverty and unhealthy environments can be in any doubt that our wellbeing and quality of life is also linked to the quality of our natural and built environments. Hence the urging, noted above, to jointly consider well-being and environmental policy.

All this is particularly important right now because the new Liberal Government has just established a Cabinet Committee on Quality of Life and Wellbeing. Its mandate is to consider “ways to improve community safety and health, advance reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, and augment the overall quality of life and well-being of Canadians.” So what can Canada learn from other countries about achieving wellbeing, happiness and a good quality of life?

The obvious place to start is the Nordic countries. Once again, the 2025 Report finds, they “lead the happiness rankings. Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden are still the top four and in the same order.”  In comparison, Canada ranks 18th – down from 6th in 2013 – and the USA 24th.

This situation is so clear and consistent that in the 2020 report the authors devoted a whole chapter to exploring what they called Nordic exceptionalism. What they found is that “the most prominent explanations include factors related to the quality of institutions, such as reliable and extensive welfare benefits, low corruption, and well-functioning democracy and state institutions. Furthermore, Nordic citizens experience a high sense of autonomy and freedom, as well as high levels of social trust towards each other.”

Contrast that with what is happening in the USA, which seems to perfectly fit the 2020 Report’s description of a low trust society trapped in “a vicious cycle where low levels of trust in corrupt institutions lead to low willingness to pay taxes and low support for reforms that would allow the state to take better care of its citizens.”

It is to be hoped that the new Cabinet Committee on Quality of Life and Wellbeing will look at the lessons to be learned from the World Happiness Report, and in particular from the Nordic countries. They – and the government as a whole – should take a lesson from Thomas Jefferson, who noted in 1809, “The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” In the 21st century, that also means ensuring the sustainability of the Earth’s natural systems that are threatened by our pursuit of economic growth rather than quality of life, wellbeing and happiness.

© 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

Eco-anxiety is rational, business-as-usual is insane

Posted on by Dr. Trevor Hancock

We must avoid the temptation to label eco-anxiety a mental-health problem. It is, in fact, a perfectly rational and normal response to the situation we face

Dr. Trevor Hancock

15 April 2025

701 words

From Mother Nature’s perspective, the results of next week’s election are largely irrelevant – and that should worry us. The two main contenders, as well as the NDP, are just proposing slightly different variants of business as usual.

Their focus is on more economic growth, more resource extraction and consumption and – although not formally part of their platforms – more resultant pollution. All they really differ about is how the spoils will be divided between the public and private sectors.

In fact, the environment, including climate change, has pretty much fallen off the public and political agenda. CBC News recently reported “In 2021, 24 per cent named the environment as their most important issue. But in this campaign, the environment is eighth on the list, at about five per cent.”

This has enabled governments in Ottawa and BC to back off from carbon pricing, having failed to vigorously defend it in the face of a powerful fossil fuel lobby. So we have lost an effective tool to reduce fossil fuel consumption, at the expense of the wellbeing of future generations and a myriad of other species. The fossil fuel robber barons must be rubbing their hands in glee.

But even though it may not be not top of mind in terms of current electoral concerns, there is a great deal of ‘eco-anxiety’ out there.  A recent survey of 1000 young people (aged 16–25) across Canada found “78 percent reported that climate change impacts their overall mental health.” But we must avoid the temptation to label eco-anxiety a mental health problem. It is in fact a perfectly rational and normal response to the situation we face.

Consider for a moment that we have now crossed six of nine planetary boundaries, of which climate change is but one, and are approaching a seventh. We just had the first year where the average global temperature was more than 1.50C above the pre-industrial level, and it’s only going to get worse. Moreover, Canada is warming at twice and the Canadian North at three times the global average, the federal government has warned.

On top of that, the loss of biodiversity accelerates, as does the level of pollution. The latest Living Planet Index report, with data to 2020, shows that the population counts for almost 35,000 monitored populations covering 5,495 vertebrate species (mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians) around the world had declined 73 percent since 1970. Meanwhile the IUCN’s Red List reports that “More than 47,000 species are threatened with extinction. That is 28 percent of all assessed species.”

When it comes to pollution, it’s important to note that six of the nine planetary boundaries that have been established involve some form of pollution – and we have crossed three of them: Climate change (greenhouse gas emissions), nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from agricultural and other wastes that pollute our lands and waters (in particular creating marine and freshwater dead zones), and novel entities.

The latter are new substances such as synthetic chemicals, pesticides and plastic nano-particles, “not previously known to the Earth system” that are produced in numbers that exceed our ability to properly assess their impacts. In addition, we are approaching a fourth boundary, ocean acidification, that results from carbon dioxide and other acidifying emissions.

So does it make sense to be worried about the state of the environment? Absolutely it does. Does it make sense to largely ignore this issue, to fail to treat it as an absolutely vital priority, as an existential concern? It does not.

It is not eco-anxiety that is the problem, it is the failure to feel eco-anxiety and to respond appropriately. Albert Einstein once said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Those among our business and political elite that continue to promote and pursue economic growth as a solution, with all its attendant problems, who continue to advocate for and implement policies and practices that push us further beyond planetary boundaries, are acting irrationally.

I would go further. It has been said that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In the face of the global ecological crises we face, business as usual is insane.

© 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