PRESS RELEASE

GPI Atlantic statement on The NRTEE's Environment and Sustainable Development Indicators Initiative

By Ronald Colman, Ph.D, June, 2002

In February, 2000, former Finance Minister Paul Martin gave $9 million to Environment Canada and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) to develop indicators of environmentally sustainable development. Mr. Martin directed the two agencies to work with Statistics Canada, and noted that this initiative might well be one of the most important elements of his 2000 budget.

Because of its research in this field over several years, GPI Atlantic was invited by the National Round Table in 2000 to participate in the NRTEE's steering committee on indicator development. It has done so actively, attending every meeting; and several GPI Atlantic researchers have participated in the expert cluster groups that were formed in 2001 to advise on specific indicator selection.

On the positive side:

1. GPI Atlantic welcomes the Finance Minister's important and responsible initiative that could not only serve the interests of future generations of Canadians, but has the potential to propel Canada to a leadership position internationally in this field.

2. GPI Atlantic recognizes the courage and openness of the Round Table in inviting participation from a wide range of independent researchers, experts, and stakeholders in this indicator development process. To its great credit, the Round Table did not take the easy path of developing its indicators behind closed doors, but conducted an open and transparent process.

3. At the start, the Steering Committee adopted an excellent and sound framework for its work, presented by Statistics Canada, that recognizes Canada's natural resources and environmental assets as "natural capital" that is subject to depreciation. The Steering Committee has recommended the development of a new set of national accounts based on an expanded capital accounting approach that includes not only natural capital, but also produced, human, and social capital. This framework is also that used by GPI Atlantic in its own work, and GPI Atlantic applauds the Steering Committee's profound and far-reaching recommendation.

4. As part of its budget, the Round Table has funded and supported innovative and leading-edge developmental indicator research throughout the country. With assistance from the Round Table, for example, GPI Atlantic completed its extensive Forest Accounts, Fisheries and Marine Environment Accounts, Greenhouse Gas Accounts, Solid Waste-Resource Accounts, and Air Quality Accounts, as well as major components of its Soils and Agriculture Accounts (including soil quality, water use, biodiversity, and economic viability of farming). GPI Atlantic appreciates this funding assistance and hopes that its research and reports in these fields will be useful both to the Round Table's work, and to Canada's future development of sustainable development indicators and natural resource accounts.

5. On GPI Atlantic's suggestion, the Steering Committee agreed to include an important qualitative indicator in its recommendations - the changing age structure of forests. We appreciate the Steering Committee's responsiveness to that suggestion, and the amendment of its draft report to include that key dimension of forest health. Several other important indicators were chosen by the Steering Committee, including a surface water quality index, exposure to ozone and particulate matter, loss of wetlands, and conversion of good agricultural land to urban uses.

6. The major strength of the Steering Committee's report is that it recognizes its work as a small first step and opening, rather than as a final or complete statement. It sees the development of a full set of capital accounts as the only way to track Canada's sustainability and environmental health comprehensively.

Despite these important contributions, GPI Atlantic does not feel that the environment and sustainable development indicators initiative has lived up to its potential. In fact, the process has been seriously flawed, imperilling the integrity of the outcomes. GPI Atlantic is compelled to disassociate itself from some of the key decisions made by the Round Table's Steering Committee. The following list summarizes some of those decisions. Please see the editorial in Reality Check Issue #2, page 2.

The following is offered in the spirit of constructive debate, with full recognition of the positive aspects of the initiative outlined on the previous page, and in the hope that it is not too late to influence Canada's approach to sustainable development indicators.

1. The seven indicators chosen are too narrow and too few, and do not come close to providing a comprehensive picture of the state of Canada's environment and natural resources, or of progress towards greater sustainability. Although the Steering Committee recognizes the preliminary nature of its recommendations, it could easily have gone a lot further than it did in this initial stage. Concerns were expressed by expert cluster group members that the indicator selection process was too constrained by its narrow terms of reference, and that inadequate time was available (just two days of meetings) to delve into the process in sufficient depth.

2. The indicators ignore the social dimension of sustainable development, including equity considerations, which are central to the Brundtland Commission's definition of sustainable development and to Statistics Canada's own discussion of that definition. For example, the fact that wealthier groups and nations consume more resources and produce more greenhouse gas emissions and waste than the poor is obscured in the current indicators. This is not a matter of ideology, but of simple description.

3. Over the strong objections of some of its members, the Steering Committee explicitly voted against adoption of any consumption-based indicator of sustainable development, like the ecological footprint for example. Canada's so-called sustainable development indicators, therefore, will send no direct message to Canadians about the impact of their driving habits, energy use, consumption patterns, waste production, or other behaviours, on the environment. It might be argued that such messages are implicit in indicators of urban air quality or forest cover, but they could have been delivered directly and explicitly through at least one consumption based indicator like the ecological footprint.

4. Despite scientific recognition that climate change is the key environmental challenge of the century, the Steering Committee voted (over the strong objection of some of its members) to exclude greenhouse gas emissions as a core indicator of sustainable development for Canada.

5. The global impact of Canadian actions is ignored in the chosen indicators. National indicators, like Canadian greenhouse gas emissions or the ecological footprint, could certainly have incorporated that global dimension.

6. The Steering Committee's selection process frequently ignored the recommendations of the expert cluster groups. For example:

   • All three indicators of soil quality, as recommended by the Land and Soils expert cluster group, were ignored. Soil carbon, for example, is widely acknowledged as a key, and excellent, indicator of soil health and productivity. There is currently no indicator of soil quality.

   • There is no indicator on fisheries, despite recommendations by the Renewable Resources expert group.

   • The creative and scrupulous adherence of the Air and Atmosphere cluster group to the capital accounting framework ostensibly adopted by the Steering Committee, and its recommendation of six key indicators representing all major dimensions of that framework, were brushed aside in the selection of a single indicator of urban exposure to ozone and particulate matter.

   • Key recommendations of the Human Capital cluster group were ignored. All health indicators recommended by the experts were rejected, so that there is currently no health indicator for human capital. The "best indicator" recommendation of the experts (literacy and numeracy) was arbitrarily swept aside in favour of a single indicator of "educational attainment" (e.g. percentage of Canadians with university degrees).

7. The process of the Environment and Sustainable Development Indicators steering committee was fundamentally flawed. Decisions were based more on preferences expressed by the Chair, and on "stakeholder" opinions of what was politically "acceptable," than on a search for best indicators. The Chair so dominated discussions with his own opinions that GPI Atlantic requested the committee name be changed to "advisory committee" rather than "steering committee." The Chair rejected that recommendation.

8. For $9 million, a tremendous amount could have been accomplished in an initiative that held (and in some ways still holds) tremendous promise and potential for Canada and for future generations of Canadians. The intention is good, and the conceptual framework is sound. But three years after its inception, when the actual results are assessed, it is questionable whether the initiative will have lived up to its potential.

The Canadian Information System on the Environment proposed by Environment Canada is an excellent idea; and the new system of national accounts proposed by the National Round Table also holds great promise. But one wonders if key elements of these systems could actually have been put in place for that money, including assembly of databases, and comprehensive indicator sets with reporting mechanisms for legislators and the Canadian public. If a few non-profits had this $9 million (or even a fraction of it) rather than government, there is no doubt that significant dimensions of these recommendations would actually have been accomplished.

These criticisms are certainly not intended to dismiss the environment and sustainable development indicators initiative out of hand, but are offered in a constructive spirit and with due acknowledgement of the strengths of the process. GPI Atlantic certainly welcomes the federal government's initiative, and its willingness to identify sustainable development indicators for Canada, and we applaud the Round Table for the many positive aspects of its initiative described above. But we owe it to the integrity of the process to expose its flaws and to promote the best possible measures of sustainability for the sake of future generations of Canadians.