Media Clipping — May 2009 Chronicle Herald

Using GPI would be genuine progress

THE BIGGEST single advance that Nova Scotians could gain from this election might be the adoption of the genuine progress index as the province’s core measure of success.

In theory, this should be simple. The GPI (http://www.gpiatlantic.org) is all about our progress toward a society which cares for people and the environment — and in 2007, the province adopted the Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, a deeply sane piece of legislation entirely in tune with the GPI. The EGSPA commits the province to fully integrate environmental sustainability and economic prosperity. Its two primary goals are to ensure that Nova Scotia has one of the cleanest and most sustainable environments in the world by 2020, and also that the province’s economic performance is equal to or above the Canadian average by 2020.

Bravo. And that Act grew out of the 2006 Opportunities for Sustainable Prosperity development strategy, which recognized — as does the GPI — that our future well-being depends on the way we steward five forms of capital: financial capital, social capital, environmental capital, built capital and human capital.

All this happy talk is endorsed by all three political parties. As Ron Colman, executive director of GPI Atlantic, likes to say, these ideas represent consensus values.

"No politician argues in favour of more pollution, more poverty, more family breakdown, more obesity," Colman says. "Rodney MacDonald doesn’t stand up and say, ‘Vote for me and I promise you the air quality will be worse.’ Darrell Dexter doesn’t say, ‘Vote for me and crime will be worse.’ We all know that certain things are good and others are bad, and we pretty much agree on what those things are."

So what’s the problem?

The problem is the addiction of politicians to the notion of economic growth, which is code for a rising gross domestic product — even though the gross domestic product ignores the things that the EGSPA says we care about.

Electrical engineers use a measure called the signal-to-noise ratio, which compares the level of a desired signal — speech, for instance — to the level of background noise. If it’s hard to make sense of the speech because of the static, the signal-to-noise ratio is poor.

The GPI filters out the static, and makes sense of the conversation. The GDP simply measures economic noise.

Anything that makes money change hands increases GDP. If we declared war on New Brunswick, or made divorce mandatory, or encouraged terrorist attacks in Malagash and Antigonish, all of that would make the economy "grow" again.

Silly? Sure. But primitive tools like the GDP prevent us from measuring our progress towards the goals we all agree on, and thus prevent us from developing intelligent policies in a timely way. Using the GDP for policy purposes is like getting on the scales to measure your collar size. You’ll get a number, certainly, but the number won’t be useful.

For example, the GDP took the constantly-rising levels of groundfish catches in the 1980s to mean that the fishery was doing fine — just before it collapsed. The GPI would have asked whether we were leaving enough fish in the sea as natural capital to sustain such catches. Quite clearly, we were not.

Today, the GDP reports that farm cash receipts have grown. So farmers are doing well? No: GPI Atlantic reports that the cost of farming has grown even more. Nova Scotia farmers are losing money, farms are vanishing, and our food supply is increasingly insecure. That’s the signal, but it’s lost in the noise of the GDP, so it’s inaudible to the public and the politicians.

GPI studies reveal that unemployment generates crime, stress and family breakdown. Please applaud Stanfield’s in Truro and Composites Atlantic in Lunenburg, who are meeting this recession by reducing working hours rather than laying off workers. That prevents a great deal of human misery — all of which would have registered as positive for the GDP.

During this election, an informal alliance of environmental and other non-government groups will be pushing all the parties to adopt the GPI as Nova Scotia’s yardstick for progress. The initiative deserves everyone’s support. When the candidate tells you she’s going to get the economy growing, ask her how she’ll measure success.

If she doesn’t know the answer, tell her. These are our leaders. Make them follow us.

Copyright © 2009, Chronicle Herald