Study finds ups, downs in quality of life in N.S.

Authors: Linda Pannozzo, Ronald Colman, Nathan Ayer, Tony Charles, Chris Burbidge, Seton Stiebert, Dave Sawyer, and Colin Dodds

This comprehensive report provides Nova Scotia with its first integrated set of progress measures that assess how the Province is doing —socially, economically, and environmentally. The Nova Scotia Genuine Progress was developed as a pilot project for Canada, and is therefore also now ready for replication in other provinces and nationally.

This 2008 Genuine Progress Index for Nova Scotia—which updates and completes 12 years of intensive research and development—presents the most recent available evidence on all 20 components of the Nova Scotia GPI-—from trends in health, crime, education, wealth, income, economic security, employment, and volunteer work to greenhouse gases, air pollution, fisheries, forests, transportation, energy, waste management, agriculture, and water quality.

The report also updates all key GPI economic valuations—including the cost of crime to Nova Scotia, the economic value of voluntary work, and the benefits and costs (in dollar terms) of the Province achieving its greenhouse gas and pollution reduction targets.

By contrast, conventional GDP-based progress measures misleadingly count natural resource depletion, and crime, pollution, and greenhouse gas emission costs as economic gains, and they ignore the value of voluntary and other unpaid work.

In the past 12 years, GPI Atlantic—whose mandate is to develop new and better measures of progress, wellbeing, and sustainable development—has released nearly 100 separate reports on a wide range of different progress measures. This is the first report that integrates all these measures, and therefore for the first time makes it possible to answer the big question: How is Nova Scotia really doing? And are we really making progress towards sustainable prosperity?

Please note that the full report accessible here is still in DRAFT form, with four chapters—Health, Agriculture, Water, and Transportation—and the Executive Summary remaining to be copyedited. As well, the water chapter is still undergoing substantive revision. The full, final, copyedited version of the report will be posted here on the GPI Atlantic home page in February 2009.