State Of Environment Report Research Articles

Great Lakes environmental indicators and state of the environment reporting: use, needs, and limitations

Perceptions and use of environmental indicators and state of environment (SOE) reports by local governments and conservation authorities within the Ontario portion of the Great Lakes and St Lawrence basin were examined through a web-based survey and follow-up telephone interviews. Indicator and SOE reporting use are described, as well as information needs and limitations and challenges in using indicators and SOE reports to formulate environmental policy. Information exchange among different levels of governance is also explored. The State of the Great Lakes environmental indicators and SOE reports, developed by the governments of Canada and the United States, were used as a case study.

An EcoHealth-based framework for State of Environment Reporting

Abstract Transformation in human-dominated ecosystems results from cumulative impacts of human activity. A comprehensive system for State of Environment Reporting (SOER) must take into account indicators of stress on ecosystems, indicators of the state of the system (i.e., ecosystem structure and function), and indicators of social response (policy interventions). The Pressure–State–Response (PSR) model for State of Environment Reporting developed by Statistics Canada in the mid 1970s incorporated these elements. By adopting an ecosystem perspective, it represented a significant advance from the then prevailing engineering-based approaches, with their focus on contaminants in air, water and land. The PSR model, however, has its own inherent limitations: its focus on isolating “pressures”, “states”, and “responses” tends to provide a static representation of the environment, ignoring the significant dynamic processes that comprise the interactions between these components. The PSR model also lacks a ‘bottom line’ that would provide the policy community and the public with an overall assessment of environmental trends. These limitations can be overcome by adopting an ecosystem health approach, which allows for a determination of the overall viability of environments and for the identification of the collective pressures from human activity that threaten that viability. An ecosystem health approach also allows for a more explicit connection between the state of the environment and human well-being. In this paper, we trace the evolution of SOER and provide some of the building blocks for overcoming its present limitations.

Using integrated state-of-environment reporting as a planning tool for resource management

The success of an ecosystems approach to river basin management depends greatly on the integration ofa wide range of information concerning the various components of the ecosystem, the formulation of realisticsolutions to complex problems, and finally, the support of all interested parties throughout the implementation phase:integrated State-of-Environment Reporting (SOER) can be an effective tool for meeting these challenges. Theecosystems approach is critical to the St. Lawrence Action Plan, a Canadian program which focuses on the protectionand conservation of the St. Lawrence River. The St. Lawrence Centre of Environment Canada not only acts asa catalyst in developing environmental partnerships among segments of the population, but synthesizes the resultsof these collective efforts. Its detailed evaluations on the state of the river environment perhaps best illustrate thenature of this task, because these reports must meet the particular environmental informational needs of many targetaudiences, which range from the general public to corporate decision-makers. SOER's practical nature facilitatesthe collection of data and the establishment of analysis targets and SOE indicators used in environmental monitoring.The integrated SOER framework developed at the St. Lawrence Centre represents a major challenge in the collection,integration, dissemination and use of environmental information. This framework is based in three majorobjectives: (1) information and education; (2) trend analysis and prediction; and (3) influence. Integrated SOER canbe a powerful tool: decision-makers will find it useful for designing action plans, while the general public can useit for assessing the state of the environment and the success of water management plans. Lastly, integrated SOERis also central to increasing public participation in the management of the environment, a factor essential to thesuccessful application of the ecosystems approach to water management.

Evolution of macro-information systems for sustainable development

The changing perception of the ‘environmental problem’, as articulated in the Brundtland Report, has shifted the issue of environment information from an almost exclusive focus on pollution towards changes in natural productivity and resource depletion. This has reorientated environmental data needs towards the macro-perspective of national accounting as reflected in natural resource stocks and flows, indicators of the state of environment and ‘sustainable development’. The Stockholm Conference (1972) raised the question of the need for a system of environment statistics, complementary to, and integratible with, the body of social and economic statistics. We propose here a conceptual framework which tracks stocks and flows of natural resources, incorporates a critical set of indicators of ecological integrity at the eco-region level, and has the capacity to integrate certain parameters in the System of National Accounts (SNA), with those found in Natural Resource Accounts (NRA), and State of Environment Reporting (SOE Reports). The emphasis is on the applied side of macro-information systems of ‘ecological economics’ as it has so far evolved from the experience of ‘official government statistics’. The final section briefly reviews developments in Canada and suggests some future directions.