Seven key trends shaping the future of the Northwest
- courtesy of Northwest Environment Watch
Over the past century, the Northwest - the region encompassing British Columbia, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and western Montana -- has changed dramatically: Northwesterners have multiplied their number ninefold, added three decades to their lives, and increased their economic output thirtyfold. Their cities and farms have spread across the most fertile lowlands in the region and their clearcuts, dams, and roads have transformed much of the rest.
These changes are extreme over decades but almost imperceptible day to day. But in most ways they shape the region's future more profoundly than fleeting, headline-grabbing events. The routine permitting and building of new houses that happens in a day, for example, has more lasting effects than a house fire that draws TV cameras. But such "slow news" is poorly tracked. The Scorecard takes the long view.
Even the few indicators of long-term trends reported in the media--the Dow Jones or the gross domestic product, for example--are misleading. The GDP, for example, can rise even as economic security diminishes.
To fill the gap, Northwest Environment Watch (NEW) is introducing the Cascadia Scorecard, an index of seven key trends that are shaping the future of the Northwest. The Scorecard puts a spotlight on the long view and the questions that most matter over time: Are we living longer, healthier lives? Are we building strong human communities? Are we handing down to our children a place whose ecosystems are regenerating?
By highlighting the communities who "score" best, the Scorecard will also offer a practical vision for a better Northwest. The full Scorecard will be published in March of 2004, and regularly thereafter. Here's a summary of the trends.
The seven trends
1. Health: Are northwesterners getting healthier? NEW is answering that question by studying lifespan, the best single measure of human health because it integrates all of the widely varying factors that shorten our lives, such as traffic accidents, cancer, suicide, and heart disease. Research from many countries suggests that lifespan is also a good shorthand measure of how healthy we are during our lives. Initial data show British Columbia leading the Northwest in longevity by two years.
2. Economy: Influential economic indicators like personal income and GDP often obscure the economic security status of ordinary northwesterners: During the past 20 years, for example, incomes have skyrocketed for the wealthy but stagnated for the poor. NEW has created a gauge of the economy's real-world effects on working families by measuring median income, unemployment, poverty, and child poverty. Economic security is important to track not only because it indicates how we're faring financially but also because long-term poverty is linked to social problems ranging from poor school performance to crime, and from teen births to child abuse.
3. Population: Population trends are an excellent gauge of women's--and families'--well-being. Around the world, as women's opportunities improve, birthrates decline, family size shrinks, and women postpone childbearing. Population also drives most increases in ecological harm; as our per capita consumption has stabilized, increases in environmental harm are largely tied to population growth.
4. Energy: Of all the commodities produced and consumed in the region, none casts a longer shadow than energy; it affects everything from national security to economic development, and from salmon survival to climate stability. As proxies for overall energy use, the Scorecard tracks highway fuels and commercial and residential electricity.
5. Sprawl: To see which Northwest communities are doing the best job at curbing sprawl and its impacts, NEW is mapping growth in the region's large and mid-sized cities, including Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, BC; and Boise, Victoria, Spokane, and Eugene. Sprawling development consumes farmland and open space, limits transportation choices, and increases taxpayer burdens. It has also been increasingly linked to health problems such as obesity.
6. Forests: Because forests are the dominant land cover in much of the Northwest, NEW's deforestation indicator is an important measure of overall ecosystem health. Clear-cuts destroy wildlife habitat, jeopardize rare and endangered species, degrade streams and watersheds, and release climate-changing gases. NEW is mapping 30 years of clear-cuts in key areas, beginning with the Olympic Peninsula, the inland rainforests of British Columbia, southern Washington and the Mount Hood area, and the Oregon Cascades.
7. Pollution: Humans and other creatures contain within their tissues a thin soup of chemicals that didn't exist a century ago. The most worrisome are persistent bioaccumulative toxics (PBTs) that build up through successive levels in the food chain, reaching high concentrations--or "body burdens"--in top predators such as humans. The Cascadia Scorecard is analyzing breast milk from 40 Northwest mothers for three such toxics: dioxin and PCBs, which have been linked to health problems ranging from intellectual impairments to cancer; and PBDEs, chemicals used as flame retardants whose levels appear to be rising exponentially in the breast milk of North American mothers. Full results of the study will be released in 2004.
Toward solutions
Ultimately the Cascadia Scorecard will serve as a diagnostic tool, helping the Northwest identify the most important "catalytic reforms" to move the region toward a better future.
"Catalytic reforms"--the focus of NEW's second research program--are high-leverage changes to policy and practice that could redirect business as usual to more sustainable ends. Examples include compact urban development, pay-by-the-mile insurance, increased insurance coverage for contraception, and tax shifting.
If you'd like to receive periodic updates about the Cascadia Scorecard, or have questions about it, please contact Leigh Sims at 206-447-1880, ext. 109, leigh@northwestwatch.org.