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It's that time of year again when the presentation boards come out - Science Fair Season. While there are innumerable science topics for kids to choose for their research, we thought it would be helpful to offer suggestions that relate to environmental science. With Earth Day and Science Fairs on the horizon, there are many great themes to help students examine an environmental topic in depth and educate their classmates and parents at the same time. Here are some ideas for environmental science fair projects:

Where does fresh water come from? [Do the demonstration in "How do we clean dirty water to make it clean enough to drink? [Demonstrate different filtering techniques.]Why is water scarce in parts of the world and who is most affected?What are the main culprits of water contamination? [Do the demonstration in " Water Science Fair Projects:
1. How does the water cycle work? [Create a working model]
2. Water, Water Everywhere."]
4.
5. Like Water and Oil" to show the effects of oil spills.]
6.
3. What are water-borne diseases and how do they affect public health?

How does polluted air affect human health? [Show the effect of pollutants on the respiratory system.]How does transportation affect air quality? [Do the experiment in " Air Quality Science Fair Projects:
7.
8. Catching Pollution."]

Climate Change Science Fair Projects:
9. What is the greenhouse effect? [Create a model]
10. How do certain human activities contribute to global warming?
11. What do ice core samples tell us about the history of global temperatures?
12. How does climate change affect the habitats and migration patterns of different species?
13. What are the consequences of global sea level rise? [Map the effects of various sea level increases, showing where impacts occur.]

Biodiversity Science Fair Projects:
14. What are invasive species and why might they pose a threat to different ecosystems? [Use a local example from your area - your County's Extension Office is a good place to research.]
15. How have we derived medicines from different plants and animals?
16. What are the major threats to biodiversity?

Agricultural Science Fair Projects:
17. What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods (GMOs)?
18. Can we feed the world with organically grown foods?
19. What are the short and long-term effects of commercial fertilizer use on the land?
20. What sort of diet would be optimal for human health and the environment? [Calculate the ecological footprint of various diets.]
21. Has the amount of arable land changed over time and how might this help predict future cropland availability? [Use " World Real Estate" to chart historical changes in the amount of arable land per person.]
22. How might climate change affect crop yields in different parts of the globe?

Renewable Energy Science Fair Projects:
23. How do solar panels work? How about wind turbines?
24. What is geothermal energy and how is it used?

Solid Waste Recycling Science Fair Projects:
25. Which materials decompose the fastest in landfills? In compost piles? [Try " Scraps into Soil" to get started and see results over time.]
26. Paper vs. Plastic - Which kind of bag has the greater impact on the environment and why?
27. How can changes in daily habits change the amount of trash we create? [Do the experiment in " Waste A-Weigh."]

Population Themed Science Fair Projects:
28. What is carrying capacity in nature and what happens when different species exceed the carrying capacity? [Read " How Many is Enough?" to learn the basics of carrying capacity.]
29. How does reproduction vary among different species (ex. number of offspring, length of gestation, mating habits)?
30. How and why did human settlements change over time and what effect have these changes had on ecosystems?

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Environmental Science Fair Projects: 30 Eco Friendly Ideas - Population Education

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It's that time of year again when the presentation boards come out - Science Fair Season. While there are innumerable science topics for kids to choose for their research, we thought it would be helpful to offer suggestions that relate to environmental science.

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Social sustainability is about identifying and managing business impacts, both positive and negative, on people. Read more here

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Science and innovation can help S'pore tackle challenges like climate change, resource over-consumption: Experts

From high-tech systems that allow farmers to predict yield and waste to recyclable food packaging material, Singapore is looking to technology to overcome challenges such as climate change, pollution and the over-consumption of resources.

"Science can shed light on the most appropriate pathways towards a sustainable future, while technology can help us get there more efficiently," said Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli yesterday at the Leaders in Science Forum, organised by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), developer JTC Corporation, and the National Research Foundation (NRF).

"Climate change, the over-consumption of resources, pollution of the air, land and water; these are all pushing our planet to a breaking point, threatening our very existence," he added.

Singapore is moving towards a circular economy in which resources are reused again and again, so that new resources do not have to be diverted to making fresh products.

Last week, the Resource Sustainability Act was passed in Parliament, providing regulatory teeth for the Government to compel large firms to reuse and recycle food, electronic and packaging waste.

Speaking to The Straits Times on the sidelines of the event, Dr Lee Chee Wee, director of the Aquaculture Innovation Centre at Temasek Polytechnic, likened technology to weapons in Singapore's quest for greater food security - echoing an analogy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong used in his National Day Rally speech.

Dr Lee said: "Similar to how soldiers cannot fight a battle barefoot, farmers must invest in the latest technology to overcome constraints in land."

A*Star's Urban and Green Tech Office executive director Alfred Huan said science and technology can help. Waste sorting, for example, can be made easier and more efficient. "This will allow waste to be treated and reused, and brought back into the manufacturing cycle," he said.

"Getting the public to accept that sustainability has to be a way of life, that they all have to play a part, is also important," he added.

NRF chief executive Low Teck Seng said: "Science enables us to make informed decisions as we develop policies for a sustainable Singapore."

Science, technology and engineering are key, be it in terms of growing sustainably and reducing the nation's carbon footprint, or adapting to climate change's impact, he said.

For instance, he said, small island states such as Singapore are vulnerable to rising sea levels. Therefore, data is needed to determine how Singapore can protect its coastlines, and the impact of development on the environment and biodiversity.

To this end, the NRF's Marine Science Research and Development Programme aims to spur research into how Singapore can cope with challenges such as climate change, heavy shipping and urbanisation.

The NRF will also work with the Centre for Climate Research Singapore, which will drive the development of the national climate science research master plan, Professor Low said.

The public sector is also leveraging science to guide its policies, said Mr Masagos. His ministry will set up a climate science research programme office next year to strengthen local climate science capabilities.

Correction note: This article has been edited for clarity.

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How tech paves way for sustainable future

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From high-tech systems that allow farmers to predict yield and waste to recyclable food packaging material, Singapore is looking to technology to overcome challenges such as climate change, pollution and the over-consumption of resources. Read more at straitstimes.com.

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If you're interested in learning more about how people think, what motivates them, how well their memories work, or any other of the fascinating things that make us human, then you're in the right place!

Explore Our Science Videos

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Please ensure you have JavaScript enabled in your browser. If you leave JavaScript disabled, you will only access a portion of the content we are providing. Here's how. If you're interested in learning more about how people think, what motivates them, how well their memories work, or any other of the fascinating things that make us human, then you're in the right place!

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Ideas for environmental learning projects

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Ideas for environmental learning projects

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At a media workshop held by the World Bank and Eco-Business in Singapore earlier this year, it emerged that news consumers are growing tired of the doom and gloom in climate reporting, and are turned off by the constant flow of news about the impending end of the world. They want solutions.

With that in mind, Eco-Business hunted for some innovations that gave us a bit of hope this year.

Car-charging roads

This year, Sweden opened a road that charges your electric car while you drive it. The road is embedded with an electric rail that can charge e-vehicle batteries as cars pass over it. A moveable arm attached to the bottom of the vehicle is lowered on to the road to draw up the charge. There's no electricity on the surface of the road, so it's safe to walk on.

River rubbish shepherds

The Great Bubble Barrier, co-invented by Dutchman Philip Ehrhorn, shepherds plastic detritus to the side of rivers using bubbles instead of physical barriers, which can harm wildlife. It works like this: a device laid diagonally on the bottom of a river pumps air through a tube. The rising bubbles bring plastic to the surface, and the flow of the river ushers the trash to the riverbank, where it can be retrieved. Tests have shown it can divert more than 80 per cent of rubbish from entering the ocean.

Reusable heat

What if the waste heat produced by ovens, computers and airconditioning exhausts could be converted into electricity? Researchers from Hong Kong University found a way to reuse low-grade heat waste by developing a low-cost energy recycling cell, which is bendable and stackable.

Fake sunflowers

Invented by Ximin He and her colleagues at the University of California, artificial sunflowers known as SUNBots mimick the sun-loving behaviour of plants to harvest solar energy. Less than one millimeter in diameter, the fake sunflowers use materials that expand and contract with heat to bend towards sunlight. The devices could increase the efficiency of solar power.

3D-printed neighbourhoods

Construction of what could be the world's 3D-printed neighbourhoood got underway in a rural, flood-prone part of Mexico in December. The 50 3D-printed houses slated to go up in Tabasco are designed to replace the homes that residents living in extreme poverty built themselves, out of whatever materials they could afford.

Electric flight takes off

Although still a long way off, fully electric commercial air travel took a step closer to reality in December, when an e-plane took off close to Vancouver, Canada. Though it flew for less than 15 minutes and only seated six people, the Harbour Air seaplane stirred hope that fuel-guzzling jets could soon be replaced by a sustainable alternative.

Coffee cars

American car giant Ford teamed up with fast food chain McDonald's to turn coffee waste into car parts. Besides diverting food waste from landfill, the bioengineered car parts will be lighter and use less petroleum.

Protein from algae

A new protein made with microalgae, which requires just 0.02 hectares of land to cultivate, can be used in anything from dietary supplements and cooking oil to biofuel. Made by plant-based seafood company Sophie's Kitchen, the alternative protein won this year's The Liveability Challenge, a global search for ideas to make Southeast Asia's cities more liveable and resilient.

Drone reforestation

Swarms of drones can plant trees 150 times faster than traditional methods, by firing seeds with speed and accuracy into the ground via biodegradable pods. The company behind the idea, United Kingdom-headquartered Dendra Systems, has a target of planting 500 billion trees.

Water cleaned by the sun

A new material that works in the same way a magnet attracts metal can nullify nearly every known disease-causing bacteria in water, according to a paper published in scientific journal Chem in February. Using sunlight and a photocatalyst to clean water has been done before, but this new innovation means that there are no pollutants left behind that previous techniques failed to remove.

Cassava bags

Carrier bags and straws made from the starch in the roots of cassava trees, developed by Malaysia-based social enterprise Green Hope, take a few months to biodegrade instead of about 400 hundred years like plastic bags. Unlike other bioplastics made from edible crops such as corn that can disrupt food chains, cassava is not a staple food in the country where it is grown, Indonesia.

Smart trash sorter

Shanghai was the first city in China to enforce new regulations for waste management this year, with steep fines for citizens who do not sort their waste properly. To help people sort their trash, online retailer JD.com created an app that identifies four waste categories-wet, dry, hazardous or recyclable. All consumers need to do is send a photo of their trash to JD.com, and artificial intelligence will categorise it for them. JD.com's rivals Alibaba and Tencent also launched trash-sorting programmes this year.

Circular t-shirts

Every second, a truckload of clothes is dumped into landfill. With this in mind, UK-based company Teemill makes new t-shirts out of old ones, and everything they make is designed to be sent back when it is worn out. Also, every link in the supply chain is powered by renewable energy.

Soap udders

Whisky bottles, Coke bottles, wine bottles, any sort of bottle will do for the Unicow, an upcycled wall-mounted soap dispenser that aims to replace single-use plastic soap dispensers. Though the Danish invention, which costs US$15 and consists of a wall mounting bracket and a plastic teat, only received limited funding on Kickstarter and promotes itself with a video featuring a dodgy parody of a David Attenborough nature documentary, it was another sign that entrepreneurs saw sustainability as a business opportunity this year.

Food waste-fighting roaches

On a cockroach farm in Jinan, China, one billion cockroaches eat through 45 tonnes of food waste a day that would otherwise be landfilled. The cockroaches are ground up and used as a food source for livestock. Cockroach farms became big business in China in 2019.

From desert to soil

Twelve million hectares of productive land are lost every year due to desertification and drought. Using a mixture of clay and water called liquid nano clay, Norwegian company Desert Control sprays the concoction half a metre deep into sand, enabling the sand to hold water, and crops to be grown.

Blue jeans go green

One of the biggest impacts of one of the most popular articles of clothing, jeans, is water use. This year, Wrangler became the first jeans brand to dye denim using foam, a technique that dramatically reduces water use.

Concentrated sun

A technology startup called Heliogen has created artificial intelligence-enabled concentrated solar power that can generate so much heat-up to 1,000 degrees Celsius-that it can now be used in energy-intensive industries such as steel and cement manufacturing.

Eco concrete

Civil engineering students from the University of the Philippines invented an alternative to regular concrete made from recycled materials such as fly ash and waste glass, combined with a common type of rock found around the university campus. The eco concrete could replace gravel and cement as a building material.
This story is part of our Year in Review series, which looks at the stories that shaped the business and sustainability scene over the last 12 months.

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The coolest sustainability innovations of 2019

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At a media workshop held by the World Bank and Eco-Business in Singapore earlier this year, it emerged that news consumers are growing tired of the doom and gloom in climate reporting, and are turned off by the constant flow of news about the impending end of the world.

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sustainable development, social justice, ecology, community, green energy, sustainable scholarship, food

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Sustainability Science probes interactions between global, social, and human systems, the complex mechanisms that lead to degradation of these systems, and ...

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Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program

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The goal of sustainable agriculture is to meet society's food and textile needs in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Practitioners of sustainable agriculture seek to integrate three main objectives into their work: a healthy environment, economic profitability, and social and economic equity. Every person involved in the food system-growers, food processors, distributors, retailers, consumers, and waste managers-can play a role in ensuring a sustainable agricultural system.

There are many practices commonly used by people working in sustainable agriculture and sustainable food systems. Growers may use methods to promote soil health, minimize water use, and lower pollution levels on the farm. Consumers and retailers concerned with sustainability can look for " values-based" foods that are grown using methods promoting farmworker wellbeing, that are environmentally friendly, or that strengthen the local economy. And researchers in sustainable agriculture often cross disciplinary lines with their work: combining biology, economics, engineering, chemistry, community development, and many others. However, sustainable agriculture is more than a collection of practices. It is also process of negotiation: a push and pull between the sometimes competing interests of an individual farmer or of people in a community as they work to solve complex problems about how we grow our food and fiber.

Topics in sustainable agriculture

Directory of UC Programs in Sustainable Agriculture

The UC Programs | Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems directory is a catalog of UC's programmatic activities in sustainable agriculture and food systems. The directory can be searched and sorted by activities and topic areas.

The Philosophy & Practices of Sustainable Agriculture

Background

Agriculture has changed dramatically, especially since the end of World War II. Food and fiber productivity soared due to new technologies, mechanization, increased chemical use, specialization and government policies that favored maximizing production. These changes allowed fewer farmers with reduced labor demands to produce the majority of the food and fiber in the U.S.

Although these changes have had many positive effects and reduced many risks in farming, there have also been significant costs. Prominent among these are topsoil depletion, groundwater contamination, the decline of family farms, continued neglect of the living and working conditions for farm laborers, increasing costs of production, and the disintegration of economic and social conditions in rural communities.

Potential Costs of Modern Agricultural Techniques

Topsoil
Depletion

Groundwater
Contamination

Degradation of
Rural Communities

Poor Conditions
For Farmworkers

Increased Production
Costs

A growing movement has emerged during the past two decades to question the role of the agricultural establishment in promoting practices that contribute to these social problems. Today this movement for sustainable agriculture is garnering increasing support and acceptance within mainstream agriculture. Not only does sustainable agriculture address many environmental and social concerns, but it offers innovative and economically viable opportunities for growers, laborers, consumers, policymakers and many others in the entire food system.

This page is an effort to identify the ideas, practices and policies that constitute our concept of sustainable agriculture. We do so for two reasons: 1) to clarify the research agenda and priorities of our program, and 2) to suggest to others practical steps that may be appropriate for them in moving toward sustainable agriculture. Because the concept of sustainable agriculture is still evolving, we intend this page not as a definitive or final statement, but as an invitation to continue the dialogue

What is Sustainable Agriculture?

A variety of philosophies, policies and practices have contributed to these goals. People in many different capacities, from farmers to consumers, have shared this vision and contributed to it.

Despite the diversity of people and perspectives, the following themes commonly weave through definitions of sustainable agriculture:

Sustainability rests on the principle that we must meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Therefore, stewardship of both natural and human resources is of prime importance. Stewardship of human resources includes consideration of social responsibilities such as working and living conditions of laborers, the needs of rural communities, and consumer health and safety both in the present and the future. Stewardship of land and natural resources involves maintaining or enhancing this vital resource base for the long term.

A systems perspective is essential to understanding sustainability.
The system is envisioned in its broadest sense, from the individual farm, to the local ecosystem, and to communities affected by this farming system both locally and globally. An emphasis on the system allows a larger and more thorough view of the consequences of farming practices on both human communities and the environment. A systems approach gives us the tools to explore the interconnections between farming and other aspects of our environment.

Everyone plays a role in creating a sustainable food system.

A systems approach also implies interdisciplinary efforts in research and education.
This requires not only the input of researchers from various disciplines, but also farmers, farmworkers, consumers, policymakers and others.

Making the transition to sustainable agriculture is a process.
For farmers, the transition to sustainable agriculture normally requires a series of small, realistic steps. Family economics and personal goals influence how fast or how far participants can go in the transition. It is important to realize that each small decision can make a difference and contribute to advancing the entire system further on the "sustainable agriculture continuum." The key to moving forward is the will to take the next step.

Finally, it is important to point out that reaching toward the goal of sustainable agriculture is the responsibility of all participants in the system, including farmers, laborers, policymakers, researchers, retailers, and consumers. Each group has its own part to play, its own unique contribution to make to strengthen the sustainable agriculture community.

The remainder of this page considers specific strategies for realizing these broad themes or goals. The strategies are grouped according to three separate though related areas of concern: Farming and Natural Resources, Plant and Animal Production Practices, and the Economic, Social and Political Context. They represent a range of potential ideas for individuals committed to interpreting the vision of sustainable agriculture within their own circumstances.

Farming and Natural Resources

When the production of food and fiber degrades the natural resource base, the ability of future generations to produce and flourish decreases. The decline of ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean region, Pre-Columbian southwest U.S. and Central America is believed to have been strongly influenced by natural resource degradation from non-sustainable farming and forestry practices.

Water

Water is the principal resource that has helped agriculture and society to prosper, and it has been a major limiting factor when mismanaged.

Water supply and use. In California, an extensive water storage and transfer system has been established which has allowed crop production to expand to very arid regions. In drought years, limited surface water supplies have prompted overdraft of groundwater and consequent intrusion of salt water, or permanent collapse of aquifers. Periodic droughts, some lasting up to 50 years, have occurred in California.
Several steps should be taken to develop drought-resistant farming systems even in "normal" years, including both policy and management actions:
1) improving water conservation and storage measures,

2) providing incentives for selection of drought-tolerant crop species,

3) using reduced-volume irrigation systems,

4) managing crops to reduce water loss, or

5) not planting at all.

Water quality. The most important issues related to water quality involve salinization and contamination of ground and surface waters by pesticides, nitrates and selenium. Salinity has become a problem wherever water of even relatively low salt content is used on shallow soils in arid regions and/or where the water table is near the root zone of crops. Tile drainage can remove the water and salts, but the disposal of the salts and other contaminants may negatively affect the environment depending upon where they are deposited. Temporary solutions include the use of salt-tolerant crops, low-volume irrigation, and various management techniques to minimize the effects of salts on crops. In the long-term, some farmland may need to be removed from production or converted to other uses. Other uses include conversion of row crop land to production of drought-tolerant forages, the restoration of wildlife habitat or the use of agroforestry to minimize the impacts of salinity and high water tables. Pesticide and nitrate contamination of water can be reduced using many of the practices discussed later in the Plant Production Practices and Animal Production Practices sections.

Wildlife. Another way in which agriculture affects water resources is through the destruction of riparian habitats within watersheds. The conversion of wild habitat to agricultural land reduces fish and wildlife through erosion and sedimentation, the effects of pesticides, removal of riparian plants, and the diversion of water. The plant diversity in and around both riparian and agricultural areas should be maintained in order to support a diversity of wildlife. This diversity will enhance natural ecosystems and could aid in agricultural pest management.

Energy

Modern agriculture is heavily dependent on non-renewable energy sources, especially petroleum. The continued use of these energy sources cannot be sustained indefinitely, yet to abruptly abandon our reliance on them would be economically catastrophic. However, a sudden cutoff in energy supply would be equally disruptive. In sustainable agricultural systems, there is reduced reliance on non-renewable energy sources and a substitution of renewable sources or labor to the extent that is economically feasible.

Air

Many agricultural activities affect air quality. These include smoke from agricultural burning; dust from tillage, traffic and harvest; pesticide drift from spraying; and nitrous oxide emissions from the use of nitrogen fertilizer. Options to improve air quality include:

- incorporating crop residue into the soil
- using appropriate levels of tillage
- and planting wind breaks, cover crops or strips of native perennial grasses to reduce dust.

Soil

Soil erosion continues to be a serious threat to our continued ability to produce adequate food. Numerous practices have been developed to keep soil in place, which include:

- reducing or eliminating tillage
- managing irrigation to reduce runoff
- and keeping the soil covered with plants or mulch.

Enhancement of soil quality is discussed in the next section.

Plant Production Practices

Sustainable production practices involve a variety of approaches. Specific strategies must take into account topography, soil characteristics, climate, pests, local availability of inputs and the individual grower's goals.

Despite the site-specific and individual nature of sustainable agriculture, several general principles can be applied to help growers select appropriate management practices:

- Selection of species and varieties that are well suited to the site and to conditions on the farm;
- Diversification of crops (including livestock) and cultural practices to enhance the biological and economic stability of the farm;
- Management of the soil to enhance and protect soil quality;
- Efficient and humane use of inputs; and
- Consideration of farmers' goals and lifestyle choices.

Selection of site, species and variety

Preventive strategies, adopted early, can reduce inputs and help establish a sustainable production system. When possible, pest-resistant crops should be selected which are tolerant of existing soil or site conditions. When site selection is an option, factors such as soil type and depth, previous crop history, and location (e.g. climate, topography) should be taken into account before planting.

Diversity

Diversified farms are usually more economically and ecologically resilient. While monoculture farming has advantages in terms of efficiency and ease of management, the loss of the crop in any one year could put a farm out of business and/or seriously disrupt the stability of a community dependent on that crop. By growing a variety of crops, farmers spread economic risk and are less susceptible to the radical price fluctuations associated with changes in supply and demand.

Properly managed, diversity can also buffer a farm in a biological sense. For example, in annual cropping systems, crop rotation can be used to suppress weeds, pathogens and insect pests. Also, cover crops can have stabilizing effects on the agroecosystem by holding soil and nutrients in place, conserving soil moisture with mowed or standing dead mulches, and by increasing the water infiltration rate and soil water holding capacity. Cover crops in orchards and vineyards can buffer the system against pest infestations by increasing beneficial arthropod populations and can therefore reduce the need for chemical inputs. Using a variety of cover crops is also important in order to protect against the failure of a particular species to grow and to attract and sustain a wide range of beneficial arthropods.

Optimum diversity may be obtained by integrating both crops and livestock in the same farming operation. This was the common practice for centuries until the mid-1900s when technology, government policy and economics compelled farms to become more specialized. Mixed crop and livestock operations have several advantages. First, growing row crops only on more level land and pasture or forages on steeper slopes will reduce soil erosion. Second, pasture and forage crops in rotation enhance soil quality and reduce erosion; livestock manure, in turn, contributes to soil fertility. Third, livestock can buffer the negative impacts of low rainfall periods by consuming crop residue that in "plant only" systems would have been considered crop failures. Finally, feeding and marketing are flexible in animal production systems. This can help cushion farmers against trade and price fluctuations and, in conjunction with cropping operations, make more efficient use of farm labor.

Soil management

A common philosophy among sustainable agriculture practitioners is that a "healthy" soil is a key component of sustainability; that is, a healthy soil will produce healthy crop plants that have optimum vigor and are less susceptible to pests. While many crops have key pests that attack even the healthiest of plants, proper soil, water and nutrient management can help prevent some pest problems brought on by crop stress or nutrient imbalance. Furthermore, crop management systems that impair soil quality often result in greater inputs of water, nutrients, pesticides, and/or energy for tillage to maintain yields.

In sustainable systems, the soil is viewed as a fragile and living medium that must be protected and nurtured to ensure its long-term productivity and stability. Methods to protect and enhance the productivity of the soil include:

- using cover crops, compost and/or manures
- reducing tillage
- avoiding traffic on wet soils
- maintaining soil cover with plants and/or mulches

Conditions in most California soils (warm, irrigated, and tilled) do not favor the buildup of organic matter. Regular additions of organic matter or the use of cover crops can increase soil aggregate stability, soil tilth, and diversity of soil microbial life.

Efficient use of inputs

Many inputs and practices used by conventional farmers are also used in sustainable agriculture. Sustainable farmers, however, maximize reliance on natural, renewable, and on-farm inputs. Equally important are the environmental, social, and economic impacts of a particular strategy. Converting to sustainable practices does not mean simple input substitution. Frequently, it substitutes enhanced management and scientific knowledge for conventional inputs, especially chemical inputs that harm the environment on farms and in rural communities. The goal is to develop efficient, biological systems which do not need high levels of material inputs.

Growers frequently ask if synthetic chemicals are appropriate in a sustainable farming system. Sustainable approaches are those that are the least toxic and least energy intensive, and yet maintain productivity and profitability. Preventive strategies and other alternatives should be employed before using chemical inputs from any source. However, there may be situations where the use of synthetic chemicals would be more "sustainable" than a strictly non-chemical approach or an approach using toxic "organic" chemicals. For example, one grape grower switched from tillage to a few applications of a broad spectrum contact herbicide in the vine row. This approach may use less energy and may compact the soil less than numerous passes with a cultivator or mower.

Consideration of farmer goals and lifestyle choices

Management decisions should reflect not only environmental and broad social considerations, but also individual goals and lifestyle choices. For example, adoption of some technologies or practices that promise profitability may also require such intensive management that one's lifestyle actually deteriorates. Management decisions that promote sustainability, nourish the environment, the community and the individual.

Animal Production Practices

In the early part of this century, most farms integrated both crop and livestock operations. Indeed, the two were highly complementary both biologically and economically. The current picture has changed quite drastically since then. Crop and animal producers now are still dependent on one another to some degree, but the integration now most commonly takes place at a higher level-- between farmers, through intermediaries, rather than within the farm itself. This is the result of a trend toward separation and specialization of crop and animal production systems. Despite this trend, there are still many farmers, particularly in the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. that integrate crop and animal systems--either on dairy farms, or with range cattle, sheep or hog operations.

Even with the growing specialization of livestock and crop producers, many of the principles outlined in the crop production section apply to both groups. The actual management practices will, of course, be quite different. Some of the specific points that livestock producers need to address are listed below.

Management Planning

Including livestock in the farming system increases the complexity of biological and economic relationships. The mobility of the stock, daily feeding, health concerns, breeding operations, seasonal feed and forage sources, and complex marketing are sources of this complexity. Therefore, a successful ranch plan should include enterprise calendars of operations, stock flows, forage flows, labor needs, herd production records and land use plans to give the manager control and a means of monitoring progress toward goals.

Animal Selection

The animal enterprise must be appropriate for the farm or ranch resources. Farm capabilities and constraints such as feed and forage sources, landscape, climate and skill of the manager must be considered in selecting which animals to produce. For example, ruminant animals can be raised on a variety of feed sources including range and pasture, cultivated forage, cover crops, shrubs, weeds, and crop residues. There is a wide range of breeds available in each of the major ruminant species, i.e., cattle, sheep and goats. Hardier breeds that, in general, have lower growth and milk production potential, are better adapted to less favorable environments with sparse or highly seasonal forage growth.

Animal nutrition

Feed costs are the largest single variable cost in any livestock operation. While most of the feed may come from other enterprises on the ranch, some purchased feed is usually imported from off the farm. Feed costs can be kept to a minimum by monitoring animal condition and performance and understanding seasonal variations in feed and forage quality on the farm. Determining the optimal use of farm-generated by-products is an important challenge of diversified farming.

Reproduction

Use of quality germplasm to improve herd performance is another key to sustainability. In combination with good genetic stock, adapting the reproduction season to fit the climate and sources of feed and forage reduce health problems and feed costs.

Herd Health

Animal health greatly influences reproductive success and weight gains, two key aspects of successful livestock production. Unhealthy stock waste feed and require additional labor. A herd health program is critical to sustainable livestock production.

Grazing Management

Most adverse environmental impacts associated with grazing can be prevented or mitigated with proper grazing management. First, the number of stock per unit area (stocking rate) must be correct for the landscape and the forage sources. There will need to be compromises between the convenience of tilling large, unfenced fields and the fencing needs of livestock operations. Use of modern, temporary fencing may provide one practical solution to this dilemma. Second, the long term carrying capacity and the stocking rate must take into account short and long-term droughts. Especially in Mediterranean climates such as in California, properly managed grazing significantly reduces fire hazards by reducing fuel build-up in grasslands and brushlands. Finally, the manager must achieve sufficient control to reduce overuse in some areas while other areas go unused. Prolonged concentration of stock that results in permanent loss of vegetative cover on uplands or in riparian zones should be avoided. However, small scale loss of vegetative cover around water or feed troughs may be tolerated if surrounding vegetative cover is adequate.

Confined Livestock Production

Animal health and waste management are key issues in confined livestock operations. The moral and ethical debate taking place today regarding animal welfare is particularly intense for confined livestock production systems. The issues raised in this debate need to be addressed.

Confinement livestock production is increasingly a source of surface and ground water pollutants, particularly where there are large numbers of animals per unit area. Expensive waste management facilities are now a necessary cost of confined production systems. Waste is a problem of almost all operations and must be managed with respect to both the environment and the quality of life in nearby communities. Livestock production systems that disperse stock in pastures so the wastes are not concentrated and do not overwhelm natural nutrient cycling processes have become a subject of renewed interest.

The Economic, Social & Political Context

In addition to strategies for preserving natural resources and changing production practices, sustainable agriculture requires a commitment to changing public policies, economic institutions, and social values. Strategies for change must take into account the complex, reciprocal and ever-changing relationship between agricultural production and the broader society.

The "food system" extends far beyond the farm and involves the interaction of individuals and institutions with contrasting and often competing goals including farmers, researchers, input suppliers, farmworkers, unions, farm advisors, processors, retailers, consumers, and policymakers. Relationships among these actors shift over time as new technologies spawn economic, social and political changes.

A wide diversity of strategies and approaches are necessary to create a more sustainable food system. These will range from specific and concentrated efforts to alter specific policies or practices, to the longer-term tasks of reforming key institutions, rethinking economic priorities, and challenging widely-held social values. Areas of concern where change is most needed include the following:

Food and agricultural policy

Existing federal, state and local government policies often impede the goals of sustainable agriculture. New policies are needed to simultaneously promote environmental health, economic profitability, and social and economic equity. For example, commodity and price support programs could be restructured to allow farmers to realize the full benefits of the productivity gains made possible through alternative practices. Tax and credit policies could be modified to encourage a diverse and decentralized system of family farms rather than corporate concentration and absentee ownership. Government and land grant university research policies could be modified to emphasize the development of sustainable alternatives. Marketing orders and cosmetic standards could be amended to encourage reduced pesticide use. Coalitions must be created to address these policy concerns at the local, regional, and national level.

Land use

Conversion of agricultural land to urban uses is a particular concern in California, as rapid growth and escalating land values threaten farming on prime soils. Existing farmland conversion patterns often discourage farmers from adopting sustainable practices and a long-term perspective on the value of land. At the same time, the close proximity of newly developed residential areas to farms is increasing the public demand for environmentally safe farming practices. Comprehensive new policies to protect prime soils and regulate development are needed, particularly in California's Central Valley. By helping farmers to adopt practices that reduce chemical use and conserve scarce resources, sustainable agriculture research and education can play a key role in building public support for agricultural land preservation. Educating land use planners and decision-makers about sustainable agriculture is an important priority.

Labor

In California, the conditions of agricultural labor are generally far below accepted social standards and legal protections in other forms of employment. Policies and programs are needed to address this problem, working toward socially just and safe employment that provides adequate wages, working conditions, health benefits, and chances for economic stability. The needs of migrant labor for year-around employment and adequate housing are a particularly crucial problem needing immediate attention. To be more sustainable over the long-term, labor must be acknowledged and supported by government policies, recognized as important constituents of land grant universities, and carefully considered when assessing the impacts of new technologies and practices.

Rural Community Development

Rural communities in California are currently characterized by economic and environmental deterioration. Many are among the poorest locations in the nation. The reasons for the decline are complex, but changes in farm structure have played a significant role. Sustainable agriculture presents an opportunity to rethink the importance of family farms and rural communities. Economic development policies are needed that encourage more diversified agricultural production on family farms as a foundation for healthy economies in rural communities. In combination with other strategies, sustainable agriculture practices and policies can help foster community institutions that meet employment, educational, health, cultural and spiritual needs.

Consumers and the Food System

Consumers can play a critical role in creating a sustainable food system. Through their purchases, they send strong messages to producers, retailers and others in the system about what they think is important. Food cost and nutritional quality have always influenced consumer choices. The challenge now is to find strategies that broaden consumer perspectives, so that environmental quality, resource use, and social equity issues are also considered in shopping decisions. At the same time, new policies and institutions must be created to enable producers using sustainable practices to market their goods to a wider public. Coalitions organized around improving the food system are one specific method of creating a dialogue among consumers, retailers, producers and others. These coalitions or other public forums can be important vehicles for clarifying issues, suggesting new policies, increasing mutual trust, and encouraging a long-term view of food production, distribution and consumption.

Contributors: Written by Gail Feenstra, Writer; Chuck Ingels, Perennial Cropping Systems Analyst; and David Campbell, Economic and Public Policy Analyst with contributions from David Chaney, Melvin R. George, Eric Bradford, the staff and advisory committees of the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.
How to cite this page This page was last updated August 3, 2021.
UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. 2021. "What is Sustainable Agriculture?" UC Agriculture and Natural Resources. <https://sarep.ucdavis.edu/sustainable-ag>

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The goal of sustainable agriculture is to meet society's food and textile needs in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Practitioners of sustainable agriculture seek to integrate three main objectives into their work: a healthy environment, economic profitability, and social and economic equity.

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Christopher Barrington-Leigh

The new science of "happiness" is revolutionizing our ability to measure social progress. Factors such as meaningful relationships and a sense of purpose and belonging have been shown to be essential to human well-being; indeed, they contribute even more than income. The happiest societies foster dignity for all, in part through robust investment in public goods and a holistic approach to education. This converging body of research indicates that well-being and ecological sustainability, goals sometimes viewed as contradictory, are in fact complementary. Emphasizing social drivers of well-being counters the conventional focus on economic growth and fosters the pro-social attitudes and behaviors necessary to live in better balance with nature. Fortuitously, recent technological innovations that make knowledge and productive capacity widely available at little cost and promote creative and collaborative activity could facilitate a transition to a world of reduced environmental stress and enhanced human well-being. An affirmative vision of a future both resilient and fulfilling, rather than one of dour work and sacrifice, should guide our way.

To date, society has gauged the advance of human welfare by relying on poor proxies such as income, employment, and GDP. However, the emerging science of "happiness" is providing new tools that could revolutionize the measurement of social progress. Emergent insights from this young field are already influencing economics, psychology, health care, and urban planning, as well as the methods of the national statistical agencies that guide policymaking. If adopted, the new metrics could have far-reaching implications for transformational social change.

At a basic level, understanding why individuals in some communities and countries are more satisfied with their lives lays a foundation for improved policy. More broadly, the study of happiness informs a value shift away from individualism and consumerism by showing that life is better when we prioritize and achieve more Aristotelian ideals, including a sense of individual and collective purpose, and connection with others.

These new insights support efforts toward a Great Transition in two key ways. First, economic growth, which has served as a proxy for gains in well-being and a palliative for social ills, has only an indirect and limited impact on well-being in the long run, so there is no reason to pursue such growth directly. Second, the sources of lasting improvements in well-being-such as trust, common cause, and compassion-are largely non-material, and thus easy on the earth. The delinking of gains in well-being from economic growth creates an opportunity for an alliance between advocates of economic justice and environmental protection, whose goals have sometimes seemed in tension. We need not accept the message that painful cuts to our quality of life are necessary in order to achieve sustainability. Indeed, an optimistic, win-win message concerning society and environment is not only compelling, but also essential for the large policy shifts necessary for building a sustainable and flourishing civilization.

There are good reasons to approach the science of happiness with skepticism. Is it possible to measure happiness in a reliable way, or to accurately compare one person's or one country's happiness to another's? Indeed, one could question the wisdom of trying to design policies to improve human happiness in the first place. However, it is worth noting that economists, who generally focus on behaviors rather than opinions, and national statistical agencies, which primarily deal with concrete and objective measures, have come to see the measurement of subjective well-being as a valuable tool for social assessment. Indeed, the science of happiness has gained prominent advocates from policy NGOs, academia, and governments across the globe. High-level government initiatives in France, the UK, the UAE, and other countries, as well as scientific and international policy agencies, are working to standardize measures and use them to drive new policy. Subjective well-being has now been measured for nearly a decade in more than 150 countries as part of the Gallup World Poll, and is included in numerous mainstream government surveys across six continents.

How is "happiness" defined and measured? The process begins with a survey that asks something called the life satisfaction (LS) question: "Taking all things into account, how satisfied are you with your life these days on a scale of zero to ten?" Although this differs from inquiring about subjects' momentary emotional state (how "happy" they feel), the data gathered is informally referred to as "happiness." Using large data sets compiled from individuals' answers to this question, along with other pieces of economic and social information, statistical analysis can provide insight into which kinds of people, communities, and nations are more or less satisfied with their lives.

This analysis helps to quantify many things we already knew, such as that health and wealth and safety are important for well-being. However, it also reveals links economists and policymakers have often overlooked, such as how important feeling connected to others and having a sense of purpose are to well-being. Volunteering, group activities, close relationships, trustworthy institutions, meaningful work, and a shared sense of identity all matter deeply. Trust is of particular importance: societies differ by levels of trust in family, neighbors, co-workers, bosses, police, government, and business; greater trust in each case supports greater life satisfaction.

Above all, the data on happiness shout out an essential truth: humans are social beings. Becoming unemployed is worse than losing income alone because of the impact of the loss of a job on one's identity, purpose, and relationships. We are hard-wired to enjoy collaborating and doing good, but also to compare our material situation to what we see around us and what we remember from the past. Consumption and wealth, therefore, make us feel good in part to the extent that we rank above others-making widespread consumption growth a zero-sum game in which the relative gains of some are experienced as a loss for others.

However, more of the variation in LS can be explained by differences in community-level social identity (the degree to which individuals feel they belong to their local community) than by differences in income. In other words, it is more important, on average, to be living somewhere with high social cohesion and inclusiveness than to be wealthy. Given the wide variation in incomes and the social emphasis on the pursuit of wealth as a means to a better life, this is remarkable.

Economists quantify the impact of life circumstances on well-being by comparing it to the impact of changes to (or differences in) income. For instance, the average difference in LS between people who feel their work colleagues "cannot be trusted at all" and those who feel they "can be trusted a lot" is the same as the average difference in LS between two people who are otherwise alike except that one has an income more than four times the other's. If you were choosing between two jobs and knew that one had a lower-trust environment but paid a lot more, would you take it? Based on this evidence, you should have a hard time choosing, but society shifts our attention toward financial compensation and away from what will ultimately matter most to the quality of our lives. Correspondingly, managers often focus on boosting salaries and bonuses rather than investing in small improvements to morale and trust.

These insights underscore the enormous influence of social factors on well-being. Indeed, the changes in income required to match some of these effects are on the order of, or more than, the total GDP of many countries. Remarkably, these findings on well-being hold for developing and less affluent countries as well as for rich ones. The lessons from happier societies today, along with those from recent policy experiments, suggest that a society better attuned to subjective well-being would likely exhibit more leisure and social time at the expense of formal work; more holistic education; and more collective enterprises and rewards. Policies that improve our levels of trust, social identity, and pro-social interaction may be worthwhile even at the cost of some missed economic growth.

While most people acknowledge that "money can't buy happiness," the relationship between money and happiness is complex. Wealth may not be everything, but how important is it?

Economists routinely address this question by calculating the implications for "welfare" (economists' term for well-being) of whatever policy they are considering, assuming that individuals are better off (happier) when they have the opportunity to consume more. The ability to consume more, however, also implies an option to have more leisure time, and it seems reasonable that if someone has more earning power, she may, in fact, work less. Such a person can afford to "invest" more in relaxation, relationships, or self-development rather than choosing to keep working in order to buy more cars, a bigger house, or more things. Economists thus assume that higher productivity, rather than income per se, is the right objective to pursue to improve well-being.

However, if you can measure happiness directly, you no longer have to rely on such assumptions. The measurement of subjective well-being came into economics in part through the work of Richard Easterlin, who in the early 1970s discovered what appeared to be a paradox. He found that while happiness was strongly correlated with income within each country and varied widely across countries, a country did not necessarily become any happier on average when it became richer. Two reasons, both backed up by empirical data, help explain this seemingly counterintuitive phenomenon. First, the satisfaction humans experience from their material situation depends in part on what they have become accustomed to. Second, and more important, satisfaction depends in part on what people see around them, i.e., norms and standards. Terms such as "hedonic treadmill" apply to the first reason; "keeping up with the Joneses" and "conspicuous consumption," the second.

Both of these explanations for the "Easterlin paradox" describe aspects of a "rat race." For any given individual, increasing income, wealth, or material consumption may look as though it will make life better, but if everyone does so, no one ends up any better off in the long run. If an individual increases his work productivity and is able to consume more, he will likely be happier, but countless people around him will end up ever-so-slightly less happy. When everyone's productivity and consumption goes up, no one is happier. It may even be harder to please one's future self with the same things that were satisfying in the past. Everyone is running faster just to stay in the same place.

The analogy of climbing a ladder illuminates the fundamental dynamic at work: there can only be one person on top, one in second place, and so on. No matter how high a group moves up a ladder together, the same number of people will lie in the bottom 20%. Ranking competitions are zero-sum games. Because we evolved in small hierarchical communities, we are very sensitive to, and motivated by, such visible social ranking.

However, not everything is zero-sum. Life satisfaction does not exhibit this "reference dependence" (or, at least, not as strongly) when it is derived from social engagement, a sense of belonging, trust, or health. If you improve your interpersonal relationships with co-workers, build more trust in your neighborhood, or take up regular practice of a team sport, you will be better off in the short and long term, and no one else will be worse off as a result. Social capital of these sorts is a positive-sum good.

Inequality often looms over discussions of social transformation and, increasingly, discussions of sustainability as well. Yet the concept of "inequality" is fuzzy, given the many ways in which it can be calculated and the fact that few call for an alternative state of perfect equality. Reducing the discussion of social transformation to a comparison of income levels, moreover, does not adequately address the human experience we ultimately care about.

The pursuit of well-being, rather than income, provides a holistic and human-centric way of responding to inequality. Ultimately, the most fundamental way to support positive social identity, and thus enhanced well-being, is to ensure people's dignity. Comparing northern European societies to the US shows that a society can provide or deny a sense of dignity to the poor, to workers, to prisoners, and to the unfortunate even in the presence of disparities in wealth. Data show that rich and poor alike are happier in societies that value all people first as humans and insist on the dignity of everyone. A happier future can accommodate modest differences in market income given that some occupations have higher economic productivity, and some people may choose to spend more of their life in the market sector. However, such a society would place much greater emphasis on ensuring dignity for everyone and fostering universal compassion as a basic social skill. Everyone would be more content because even the privileged and wealthy suffer when they are constantly judging others, mentally classifying people as different or oppositional, or fearing for their own safety in others' presence.

Focusing on respect and dignity offers a more proximate key to both social sustainability and well-being. These values can be embodied in robust social insurance systems that help build a sense of common cause and a recognition of our shared vulnerability. Of course, social safety nets involve redistribution of income, so it is no coincidence that the happiest societies (largely among the Nordic countries) are also among those with the lowest levels of (post-tax) income inequality. Redistribution, however, is only one part of the solution: actively counteracting self-perpetuating stigmas is also necessary for a more universal sense of dignity, inclusion, and compassion.

As decades of work in developmental psychology, labor economics, and other fields have shown, conditions experienced in early life profoundly and permanently affect later outcomes, including health and labor productivity, as well as all the social outcomes that we now know are central to a happy life. To foster positive social identity and reduce inequality, we must collectively invest more in children. The well-being payoff of strong supports and safety nets for children is likely to be enormous.

Compassion, resilience, "mindfulness," leadership, and relationship-building skills all require training and improve with formal practice, like physical activities and like reading, writing, and arithmetic. Pro-social skills have been the subject of much research, so teaching and promoting them is neither an ideological exercise nor an act of mysticism.

Focusing on preparing youngsters for a fulfilling life (with such skills as resilience, compassion, and leadership) rather than simply preparing them for the job market has profound implications for well-being and education. When the OECD ran an experiment that emphasized non-academic social-emotional skills in school teaching, the average self-reported life evaluation of students rose significantly and stayed up a year later. Test scores increased by more than twice as much as they did the best available academic interventions. Programs to foster such non-academic skills are now being tested and rolled out throughout South Asia, Latin America, and Canada; attendance, graduation rates, and physical health all have improved in response. In some countries, like Denmark, which reports the highest adult life satisfaction in the world, such life skills are already standard teaching practice. Improved test scores and career prospects make for a win-win situation, but the ultimate justification for pursuing them should be the lifelong subjective well-being of the students.

In general, if you want to know what the future will look like, take a look at the investments being made today. To understand and shift the future social fabric, one must start quite deliberately with investments in the young. Changing norms and expectations of institutions is a long-term project. Shifting from a low-trust society towards the Scandinavian model cannot be accomplished overnight, but requires sustained and comprehensive effort over a generation or more.

If we care about the well-being of future generations, then we must guarantee them a livable planet. But the well-being of future generations does not always enter our everyday decision-making about our own well-being. Our efforts toward building a happier society today will not alone ensure sustainability for tomorrow. Humans have limited foresight and perspicacity when answering the life satisfaction question, even though it encompasses, in principle, everything respondents know about their lives-current, past, and future.

On the other hand, the pursuit of human well-being and ecological sustainability may complement each other because a stronger focus on well-being leads naturally to more pro-social thinking and behavior, which, in turn, facilitate the ability to address collective challenges. This dynamic makes avoiding and mitigating environmental problems easier to achieve. The countries with the highest levels of social trust tend to be those with the strongest environmental protections. This is true even with regard to protecting resources beyond their own borders, because those who trust their own neighbors also tend to have more empathy for outsiders.

To ensure sustainability, numerous constraints must be imposed on human activities in order to limit material impacts on natural systems. Such constraints may make us less affluent than we might otherwise become, limit our consumption choices, and possibly (but not likely) even make us have to work harder. However, as life satisfaction data show, a reduction in potential income will not necessarily reduce well-being (particularly for those in upper-income brackets), and fewer choices in some areas may not make much difference to happiness. Work does not just entail suffering undertaken in exchange for payment: it also embodies meaning and relationships. Moreover, many of the opportunities for improving well-being discussed so far do not necessitate an increase in environmental harm or even material production. Pursuing sustainability and well-being can be done in tandem.

We can thereby relax the societal focus on the size of the economy in not one but two respects: we should pursue neither its expansion nor, in the hopes of limiting environmental destruction, its contraction. The idea of "degrowing" the economy has become a rhetorical trap which, like the mainstream emphasis on growth, perpetuates a focus on GDP. Rather than seeing GDP growth as a villain or a panacea, we should address the goal of improving well-being and the constraints of sustainability as directly as possible.

The fortuitous truth is that we can improve our lives, individually and collectively, while simultaneously reducing our impact on the natural systems that support us. To achieve the dual aim, we should measure what really matters to us, and others on Earth, as directly as possible, and then let the results guide our actions.

Technological change plays a key role in long-run social transformations, and the changes underway now are the most significant ever. New developments are increasingly allowing value to be created by "the crowd." We live in a world of electronic media as well as the electronic consumption of goods that can be duplicated costlessly. Open-source software, created by a global community and shared freely, now runs most of the world's smart phones (Android) and nearly all of the servers (GNU/Linux), which keep the Web and the Amazons, Googles, and Facebooks of the world running. Even open-source hardware now exists, for example, in the form of blueprints for 3D printing and other distributed manufacturing, which promise nearly costless duplication of some physical goods. Humanity's productive knowledge is increasingly held in these open-source tools and in communal repositories like Wikipedia, Stack Exchange, and open courseware. At the same time, peer-to-peer services and the sharing economy allow for greater utilization of existing capital.

Imagine a world in which such developments become increasingly prominent or even dominant, that is, in which capital accumulation is largely in the form of easy-to-share information, digital tools, and blueprints, rather than private physical capital. In such a world, the process of creation, rather than production, becomes central to meeting everyone's needs and wants.

In this new world, markets would still have a role in the provision of consumer goods and the most human-centric services as well as rationing raw materials and real estate. However, the creation of public goods would become the most valuable activity, if it has not already. If many material needs are met at low cost through robotic service and replication, the objective of society may increasingly become finding people fulfilling occupations. In this "zero marginal cost society," in which most production and duplication inevitably becomes nearly free and automated, human activity will shift towards collective creative endeavors and human-centric services.

Such a society, should it emerge, would advance the joint goals of well-being and sustainability in two ways. First, without proprietary control over the production of goods, firms would not have the incentive to manufacture demand for things. In the current form of capitalism, advertising and demand creation can build a wedge between our behavior and our well-being-i.e., they can guide us to make individual choices that create a profit for others but are not actually in our own interest. Such activities will disappear to the extent that the consumer is also in charge of production. Second, with less economic centralization, progress would focus more on collaborative and pro-social efforts toward creativity and innovation. Fortuitously, creative, pro-social, team-oriented, and collaborative behaviors strongly support positive evaluations of work and life. In a further lucky twist, the jobs least subject to automation would be those based on personal and pro-social interaction, because such skills cannot be replicated by machines.

In addition to qualitative shifts in labor, the explosion in access to cheap services and goods (and, soon, cheap non-human labor) would provide an incalculable increase in our incomes and wealth. The free availability of on-demand information, media, and productivity tools with which we interact daily would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. The increases to productivity from online how-tos alone are mind-boggling. With the digital services, sharing, and artificial intelligence revolutions, we stand at the beginning of an explosion of wealth in collective assets. As these developments continue, people will have more time for activities outside the market, from collective action to simple social and community contact to individual and collaborative creative expression.

The explosion in wealth due to non-material advances further underscores the irrelevance of GDP to well-being-oriented sustainable development. The transformative gains in consumption that these advances provide generally do not register in GDP calculations, but yield considerable benefits for psychological well-being. Moreover, much of the associated gain in wealth depends little on increased material flows, thereby separating income from environmental impact.

When goods can be freely shared and reproduced, policies can and should arise to provide for those goods collectively. This would mean a bigger role in the future for cooperative, public institutions and endeavors. The literature on life satisfaction suggests that we are hard-wired to benefit from intrinsic rewards, social rewards, interpersonal interactions, and a sense of belonging, whether on the local level or the global level, as has been fostered by technological shifts and global challenges. With a reduced need for private capital, our institutions and the way we actually spend our time are likely to be better aligned with the fundamental supports for satisfying lives and with our natural human instincts for collaborative pro-social undertakings.

Millions of people's responses to life evaluation questions have shown that although affluence is important to subjective well-being, much of that benefit may come from collective resources-i.e., the ability of a society to provide public goods that benefit everyone simultaneously. Chief among such public goods are the opportunity to belong and to contribute, and a social environment that fosters feelings of safety, trust, and autonomy. If we took subjective well-being as a guide to policy, we would focus on the quality of jobs, not just income; on respect and dignity rather than equality per se; on improving the social and emotional environments of our children; and on educating for well-being and high social functioning rather than primarily for academic aptitude and performance.

A happy society is one in which people have the freedom and capacity to excel at their work, to take on new challenges, and to contribute to the well-being of others. These characteristics have little correlation with the intensity of material flows through the economy. These new insights about happiness can enable advocates of social justice and advocates of environmental sustainability to combine forces in support of a unified agenda inspired and justified by our knowledge of what sustains satisfying lives. Focusing on well-being effectively supports efforts to reduce environmental strain because doing so sidesteps conflict between economic growth and sustainable development, and because both human nature and current technological transitions favor non-material benefits that support well-being.

A Great Transition to a new paradigm of social objectives and sustainable decision-making can arise from focusing not on sacrifice but on the opportunities ahead. While challenges abound, the future is overflowing with possibilities. By aligning public sentiment and decision-making bodies with the social objective of satisfying lives, we can boldly embrace the stark constraints we face and build the most desirable society ever seen.

1. For recent work on cross-cultural comparisons, see John Helliwell and Christopher Barington-Leigh, "Measuring and Understanding Subjective Well-Being," Canadian Journal of Economics 43, no. 3 (2010): 729-753; and Carrie Exton, Conal Smith, and Damien Vandendriessche, "Comparing Happiness Across the World: Does Culture Matter?" (working paper, OECD Statistics Working Paper, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, November 5, 2015).
2. The list of Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economists who support this new approach to well-being includes Joseph Stiglitz, Angus Deaton, Daniel Kahneman, and George Akerlof.
3. For reports commissioned by national governments, see Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (Paris: National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, 2009), http://library.bsl.org.au/jspui/bitstream/1/1267/1/Measurement_of_economic_performance_and_social_progress.pdf; and UK Office for National Statistics, Measuring What Matters: National Statistician's Reflections on the National Debate on Measuring National Well-Being (Newport, South Wales: Office for National Statistics, 2011), https://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/user-guidance/well-being/publications/measuring-what-matters--national-statistician-s-reflections-on-the-national-debate-on-measuring-national-well-being.pdf. The Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a project of the UN, has released annual reports on world happiness since 2012: see, for example, John Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs, eds., World Happiness Report (New York: SDSN, 2012), http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2012/. See also the OECD's 2013 guidelines: OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-Being (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2013).
4. John Helliwell and Christopher Barrington-Leigh, "How Much is Social Capital Worth?" in The Social Cure: Identity, Health, and Well-Being, eds. Jolanda Jetten, Catherine Haslam, and S. Alexander Haslam (Milton Park, UK: Psychology Press, 2011), 55-71. See Table 1.
5. Ibid. While not necessarily causal, this relationship holds even after controlling for other forms of trust, other social connections, subjective sense of belonging, and numerous other variables.
6. See, e.g., John Helliwell, Christopher Barrington-Leigh, Andy Harris, and Haifang Huang, "International Evidence on the Social Context of Well-Being," in International Differences in Well-Being, eds. Ed Diener, John Helliwell, and Daniel Kahneman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 213-229; Christopher Barrington-Leigh, "Inequality and Subjective Well-Being" (working paper, UBC Economics, University of British Columbia, 2010); Geeta Gandhi Kingdon and John Knight, "Community, Comparisons and Subjective Well-Being in a Divided Society," Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization 64, no. 1 (2007): 69-90.
7. Before delving into this mystery, it is important not to overstate the paradox. The data show that, at one moment in time, people in richer countries do tend to report higher life satisfaction.
8. However, uncertainty remains. See Andrew Clark, Paul Frijters, and Michael Shields, "Relative Income, Happiness, and Utility: An Explanation for the Easterlin Paradox and Other Puzzles," Journal of Economic Literature 46, no. 1 (2008): 95-144; Richard Easterlin, Laura Angelescu McVey, Malgorzata Switek, Onnicha Sawangfa, and Jacqueline Smith Zweig, "The Happiness-Income Paradox Revisited," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 52 (December 2010): 22463-22468; Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, "Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox" (working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008); Christopher Barrington-Leigh, "Consumption Externalities," in Encylopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, ed. Alex Michalos (New York: Springer, 2014), 1248-1252.
9. A county's level of inequality is not itself correlated with its average well-being after controlling for the country's income level. However, there is a strong negative correlation between average well-being and the degree to which one's socioeconomic position determines one's subjective well-being. This relationship can be partly accounted for by how people in each country ranked on the "post-materialism" scale; that is, countries where economic position was a more important determinant of happiness were those with materialistic values and were altogether less happy, controlling for income. See Barrington-Leigh, "Inequality and Subjective Well-Being."
10. For example, mental health problems are now an enormous loss for well-being, with 10% of the global population suffering from mental illness at any moment. The benefits in income terms of more openly and comprehensively treating it are enormous. For a discussion in the context of SWB, see Richard Layard, Dan Chisholm, Vikram Patel, and Shekhar Saxena, "Mental Illness and Unhappiness," in World Happiness Report 2013, eds. John Helliwell, Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs (New York: SSDN, 2013), 38-53.
11. See Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2014).
12. See George Akerlof and Robert Schiller, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).

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Sustainability and Well-Being: A Happy Synergy

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Christopher Barrington-Leigh The new science of "happiness" is revolutionizing our ability to measure social progress. Factors such as meaningful relationships and a sense of purpose and belonging have been shown to be essential to human well-being; indeed, they contribute even more than income.

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SDU Health And Medical Medico-Legal Report Guide

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Welcome to SDU Health. Our website is dedicated to providing you with helpful information on medico-legal reports, working with medical experts to obtain evidence for claims, and how we can help you find the best medico-legal experts for your needs using our extensive and nationwide network.

To get in touch with us, head to our contact page and send us your enquiry, or you can call us now using the number at the top of this page.

What Are Medico-Legal Reports?

A medico-legal report is a piece of evidence primarily used to establish causation in the likes of a personal injury claim. This means that the report will consider whether the injuries sustained by the claimant were consistent with the circumstances of the accident.

In addition to establishing this key point in a case, a medico-legal report can also be used to help solicitors value the injuries sustained.

As we'll see below, it's important to understand how severe the injuries are, how long it will take to recover from them, and whether or not their effects will be permanent. All of this information can be provided by an expert in a medical report.

Different Types Of Medico-Legal Reports

It's possible to obtain a medico-legal report for a range of different types of injuries and conditions. For example:

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and if you're looking for an expert in another field, we can help connect you to them.

The Process Of Medico-Legal Report Writing

The process of instructing medical experts for the purposes of compiling medico-legal reports is relatively simple and straightforward.

Oftentimes, the biggest challenge is finding a suitably qualified expert that is within a reasonable distance to the claimant's home. If you're looking for a medico-legal expert for one of your clients, you may have encountered this exact problem.

Even if you do find an expert after a search on the likes of Google, you may find that they no longer do medico-legal work or may have even retired-pages and profiles on directories don't always get updated.

So in this situation, an option you have is to contact medico-legal companies or agencies, like us. These organisations possess an extensive network of experts. They can make your life a lot easier too, organising the medical assessment between you, your client and the expert at a time that works for all parties.

Medico-legal agencies can also handle the process of obtaining medical records and can facilitate the delivery of those records to the expert.

In terms of paying for the report, most experts will seek immediate payment. However, if working with medico-legal companies, you may find they offer a fee deferment option. This means that the agency will fund the cost of the report in the short-term, for a small fee, with payment made by the solicitor (or you if representing yourself), at the end of the claim.

If there are any issues obtaining medico-legal reports from the expert, an agency can chase them on your behalf.

How Do Doctors and Specialists Become A Medico-Legal Advisor?

Not any doctor or specialist can write a medical report. They need to have undergone specialist legal training so that their reports comply with guidelines like the Civil Procedure Rules. To undertake medico-legal work means you'll be acting as an expert witness.

It's also important that any expert undertaking such work is properly trained on the different eventualities that could arise from providing evidence. For instance, if the defendant contests the medical report, they may have to defend their opinion in court.

Defendants can sometimes apply to the court to get their own medical evidence. This may mean that the claimant's expert will then have to defend their opinion against a second expert, who may hold completely differing views.

It's therefore important that any expert providing medico-legal reports get the right training before undertaking such work.

Medico-Legal Reports For Medical Negligence Cases

A complex area of law, medical negligence cases can be difficult to prove. They require the claimant to show that a healthcare professional, such as a doctor, nurse or surgeon, failed to uphold the duty of care they owed their patient.

This may have been through a deliberate act, such as a surgical error, or an omission, like failing to prescribe medication or diagnose an injury or illness.

However, proving that a doctor breached their duty of care can be difficult. A legal test, known as the Bolam Test, exists to determine whether a doctor or healthcare professional acted in a manner that deviated away from the accepted standard of care.

To succeed in such an argument, it's necessary to have the right medico-legal reports to support the case. Finding the medical experts you need to prove a case can be difficult, however, especially if the specialism is niche.

That's why working with an organisation like SDU Health can benefit you greatly. Using our extensive network of medico-legal experts, we can connect you with experienced and eminent experts specialising in clinical negligence cases.

If you choose to work with us, we can supply you with a number of medical experts to choose from, along with their CVs, so you can see which professional would suit your needs best.

We can help with:

Screening reports for GPs and all consultant specialisms

Causation reports

Breach of duty reports

Condition and prognosis reports

The collection of all required medical records, along with pagination to make the medico-legal expert's job that little bit easier.

If you'd like to find out more, check out our medical negligence reports guide here. Or get in touch today to see how we can help you.

How SDU Health Can Help You

Here at SDU Health, we understand how busy the lives of solicitors are and how time-consuming and challenging it can be to find and instruct the best medico-legal expert for your case.

That's why we help make the process as simple and painless as possible. From sending us instructions to delivery of the final report, we'll do all of the legwork so that you can focus on your own workload.

If you'd like to ask us any questions about obtaining medico-legal reports, or if you'd like our help, just get in contact with us today.

This government guide on medico-legal work may also provide some answers to questions you may have.

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Home - SDU Health And Medical Medico-Legal Report Guide

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Welcome to SDU Health. Our website is dedicated to providing you with helpful information on medico-legal reports, working with medical experts to obtain evidence for claims, and how we can help you find the best medico-legal experts for your needs using our extensive and nationwide network.

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Measuring Wellbeing - World Happiness Report

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Measuring Wellbeing - World Happiness Report

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Introduction

This chapter explores the empirical links between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and human well-being. The SDGs were ratified in 2015 as the successor to the Millennium Development Goals and have a target date of 2030. The goals measure different aspects of the economic, social and environmental development within countries. To empirically explore the linkages between sustainable development and well-being we combine two major data gathering efforts. We leverage the SDG Index, which measures how far along countries are in the process of achieving the SDGs. We also use the Gallup World Poll, which is a survey that is representative of about 98% of the world's population and includes an item on how people evaluate the quality of their lives, which we will henceforth refer to as subjective well-being (SWB). Data on other dimensions of subjective well-being, such as the experience of positive and negative emotions, will be referred to explicitly rather than as elements of a more broadly defined SWB. Combining the Gallup World Poll and SDG Index data sets enables us to empirically explore how sustainable development relates to the way people experience their lives.

Intuitively, making progress in terms of sustainable development is likely to benefit both people and planet. Detailed empirical work, however, may reveal some tensions where actions needed to achieve sustainability may challenge people into changing behaviours and potentially reducing their well-being (at least in the short run). In fact, large-scale social movements such as the "yellow vests" in France were initiated when additional fuel taxes were introduced. While fuel taxes are considered an effective way to induce more sustainable behaviour, they put additional pressure on the lifestyles and purchasing power of people living outside of major cities who require more use of automobiles given that there are less public transport options available to them. Alongside social movements such as the "yellow vests," there are the pro-environment movements such as "Extinction Rebellion" that raise alarm bells over climate change and the need for drastic and immediate measures to reduce our reliance on carbon fuels. By unpacking the seventeen SDGs in relation to well-being, this chapter tries to take a closer empirical look at how sustainable development aligns with the interests of people and planet, but also where there may be inherent tensions that require more complex policy efforts in order to chart a course towards environmentally sustainable and socially equitable growth without reducing human well-being.

A related empirical question concerns the relative importance of each of the SDGs in terms of driving human well-being. All SDGs are important-but some SDGs may be more relevant to well-being than others. This is of interest for a number of reasons. Those SDGs that are most strongly linked to advancing well-being could perhaps be prioritized if budgets are limited (and well-being considered a goal of policymaking). Advancing on SDGs that are negatively correlated with well-being metrics will likely require more complex policy action in order to alleviate other concerns. By unpacking the SDGs in terms of well-being, we also show how their relative importance may change over time and by regional context. The analyses reported in this chapter may provide some broad policy guidance to policymakers across the world's regions that are keen to advance the well-being of both people and the planet.

In line with intuition, the countries with a higher SDG Index score tend to do better in terms of subjective well-being (SWB)-with the Nordic countries topping both rankings. In fact, there is a highly significant correlation coefficient of 0.79 between the SDG Index and the SWB scores. This shows the importance of a holistic approach to economic development when trying to improve citizen well-being. Interestingly, the best fitting model to describe the relationship between the SDG Index and SWB takes a quadratic form indicating that a higher SDG Index score correlates more strongly with higher SWB at higher levels of the SDG Index. This would indicate that economic growth is an important driver of well-being at early stages but becomes less significant later in the development cycle. Put differently, this result implies increasing marginal returns to sustainable development in terms of human well-being.

A conceptual model that explores the pathways between sustainable development and well-being finds that the SDGs are strongly related to the 'determinants of well-being' as laid out in Chapter 2. These are income, social support, generosity, freedom, trust in government, and health. Among the different SDGs, however, we find much heterogeneity in how they correlate to SWB. In fact, some of the environmental goals are significantly negatively correlated with SWB. These are Goal 12 (responsible consumption and production) and Goal 13 (climate action). Moreover, there are significant regional differences in these correlations. For example, Goal 10 (reducing inequality) has a 0.71 correlation with SWB in Europe but is not correlated with SWB in many other regions. As such, these analyses reveal a number of intrinsic tensions between sustainable development and well-being that will hopefully stimulate further research and debate in order to inform policy action.

This chapter begins by discussing the headline correlation between the SDG Index and SWB. We analyse the quadratic relationship depicted and then show which countries significantly deviate from the main trend. We then also look at how SWB is related to other indices that measure progress to show that the SDG Index compares well with them. In the next section, the SDG Index is split into its 17 component goals and we analyse the varying relationships with well-being. Here we discuss the trade-offs that appear when we dig deeper into the relationship between sustainable development and well-being. We finish this section by conducting a variance decomposition analysis to show which goals contribute most strongly to the variation in well-being between countries. Finally, we look into the determinants of well-being and analyse them as pathways by which the sustainable development goals affect well-being. Generally, this chapter finds that the SDGs are a critically important but complex set of targets as governments increasingly appreciate the overarching goal of improving the well-being of their populations.

Is sustainable development conducive to human well-being?

For our analyses, we use the standard measure of well-being used in the World Happiness Report rankings and most other research on the topic. The survey item asks respondents to value their current lives on a 0 to 10 scale, with the worst possible life as a 0 and the best possible life as a 10. Countries are coded to represent the six regions they belong to: Europe, Middle East and Northern Africa, Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa and Former Soviet Union. The G7 and BRICS countries are also labelled, as well as some of the outlier countries.

Figure 6.1 shows the scatterplot for the SDG Index and SWB for all countries in the dataset. The SDG Index and SWB have a highly significant correlation coefficient of 0.79, and interestingly, the line of best fit is not linear but quadratic. In Appendix, we show that the quadratic fit is statistically superior compared to a pure linear fit, as well as higher-powered models as borne out when applying the Bayesian information criterion and Akaike information criterion to test the relative quality of model fits. The notion of increasing marginal returns to sustainable development aligns with economic intuition and prior research on the economics of well-being. As countries become more developed, a higher SDG Index score is associated with an ever higher SWB score. This implies that economic activity is more important for well-being at lowers levels of economic development. As countries become richer the well-being of their citizens stagnates unless further economic growth is more sustainable by, for example, addressing inequality and improving environmental quality.

Figure 6.1: Sustainable development and subjective well-being

Our measure of SWB is an evaluative measure of well-being and the survey responses may differ from emotional measures of well-being, especially when looked at in relation to economic measures such as income and development. As such, in the Appendix we also report on the relationship between the SDG Index and measures of emotional well-being. The Gallup World Poll includes measures of positive emotions such as "enjoyment" and "smile or laugh," as well as negative emotions such as "worry", "sadness", and "anger". Correlating an index of positive emotional experiences with the SDG Index scores leads to a correlation coefficient of 0.27-while statistically significant, this indicates a much weaker empirical link between achieving the SDGs and the experience of positive emotions as compared to life evaluations already examined. This is less the case for an index of negative emotional experiences, for which we obtain a correlation coefficient of -0.57 suggesting that countries that are not doing well in terms of the SDGs also tend to have populations that are experiencing more negative emotions. In general, these results are in line with the notion that evaluative measures correlate more strongly with economic measures such as income, development, and inequality than emotional measures of well-being.

Table 6.1: Country outliers relative to model line of best fit

Table 6.1 show the list of countries that deviate most from the trend line. The countries significantly above the line of best fit clearly punch above their weight in terms of happiness relative to where the model would expect these countries to be given their scores on the SDG Index. Conversely, countries significantly below the line of best fit punch below their weight in terms of well-being relative to where we expect their average levels to be given their score on the SDG Index. These empirical observations raise interesting questions on why these countries' average well-being levels deviate substantially from the trend. These results also indicate that there are a number of aspects that drive human well-being that are not fully captured by the SDGs.

How well do the SDG Index and other development indices explain well-being?

In this section, we investigate how well the SDG Index relates to human well-being. To be able to compare and contrast the SDG Index (SDGI) we also include the Human Development Index (HDI), Index of Economic Freedom (IEF), Global Peace Index (GPI), Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), Environmental Protection Index (EPI), and GDP per capita.

Table 6.2 indicates that the SDG Index and other indices of development are positively and significantly correlated with SWB. SWB is most strongly correlated with the Human Development Index, but the statistical confidence intervals around these estimates suggests that there is no significant difference with the coefficients on the SDG Index, Global Competitiveness Index, Environmental Protection Index, and even with GDP per capita. The Index of Economic Freedom and the Global Peace Index are, however, significantly less correlated with SWB as compared to the aforementioned indices.

The Human Development Index measures the level of welfare within a country by looking at three different indicators: Life Expectancy Indicators, Educational Attainment Indicators, and Standard of Living Indicators. The Life Expectancy Indicator refers to life expectancy at birth. Educational Attainment consists of the adult literacy rate and gross enrollment ratio. Standard of Living is measured by GDP per capita. These data that make up the HDI have much overlap with what the SDG Index measures (correlation of 0.92 between the HDI and the SDG Index).

Table 6.2: Regression analysis of SDG Index and other development indicators on subjective well-being

The Global Competitiveness Index consists of the following 12 pillars: Institutions, Infrastructure, ICT adoption, Macro Stability, Health, Skills, Product Market, Labour Market, Financial System, Market Size, Business Dynamism, and Innovation Capability. This is a comprehensive measure that also has significant overlap with the SDG Index and HDI. The correlations are 0.87 and 0.92 respectively.

The Environmental Protection Index has twenty-four indicators organized into ten issue categories and two policy objectives. These ten issue categories cover: Biodiversity & Habitat, Forests, Fisheries, Climate & Energy, Air Pollution, Water Resources, Agriculture, Heavy Metals, Water & Sanitation, and Air Quality. The EPI is a comprehensive measure of the natural environment that is much wider in scope than the environmentally oriented SDGs.

GDP per capita and the Index of Economic Freedom are also positively correlated with SWB, but less so than the aforementioned indicators. This is perhaps to be expected: economic growth is only one of the many drivers of well-being. In turn, the Index of Economic Freedom gauges how conducive the socio-economic environment is for economic growth.

Finally, we note the relatively weak correlation between the Global Peace Index and SWB. The GPI is a very broad measure that considers international and domestic conflict, crime, political instability, number of police per 100,000 citizens, and nuclear and heavy weapons capability, among others. The relatively low correlation with SWB and other development indices such as the GPI (see correlation table in Appendix) may be the result of more developed nations also being more likely to have nuclear capability and perhaps a larger police force while no less reports of crime than developing nations. It would appear that the GPI is constructed in a way that does not lend itself easily to gauge the common sense that safe environments to live in would be a necessary precursor to happy communities.

In column (8) of Table 6.2 we include all these development indices in a single regression with SWB as the dependent variable. As noted before, some of these indices are strongly correlated so this multivariate regression suffers from multicollinearity. The results of this exploratory analysis suggest that the SDG Index remains significant alongside the Environmental Protection Index and GDP per capita. Other tests show that the four insignificant variables can be safely omitted, such that the model reported in column (9) that only includes the SDG Index, Environmental Protection Index and GDP per capita provides a sufficient explanation.

Unpacking the SDGs in relation to well-being

In this section, we unpack the SDGs and consider the seventeen goals separately in relation to well-being. While the overall SDG Index may correlate strongly with human well-being, the question remains whether some SDGs may be more or less conducive to well-being. We start by considering the basic univariate correlations between each SDG and well-being globally before doing the same by region of the world. Later in this section we apply a variance decomposition method to consider the relative importance of each SDG in explaining the variance in well-being between countries. Both these approaches reveal important heterogeneity in how the SDGs relate to well-being.

How does each SDG relate to well-being?

In Table 6.3 we report on how each SDG correlates with well-being both globally and regionally. As expected from the aforementioned general results, we find that most SDGs correlate strongly and positively with higher well-being. At the same time, by unpacking the SDGs we discover much heterogeneity in how some of the SDGs relate to well-being. In fact, we find SDGs 14 (Life below water), 15 (Life on land), and 17 (Partnerships for the goals) to be generally insignificant. Strikingly, we find that SDGs 12 (Responsible consumption and production) and 13 (Climate action) are significantly negatively correlated with human well-being.

Table 6.3: Correlation table for each SDG and well-being (globally and regionally)

When looking at the relationship between SDGs and well-being by region we detect further levels of heterogeneity in how individual SDGs relate to well-being in different contexts. It is, however, important to note that considering these data by region reduces the number of observations and therefore both the precision of the coefficient and the statistical power to report significant differences. As Figure 6.1 revealed visually, there is a stronger link between the SDG Index and well-being at higher levels of economic development. In Table 6.3 we indeed find that the general correlation between the SDGs and well-being is considerably lower in regions with mostly developing nations. In fact, only for Europe, Asia, and the Americas do we pick up a strong statistically significant correlation between the SDG Index and well-being. When looking at the SDGs individually, we pick up even more variation in how some SDGs are more strongly correlated than others with well-being. Some noteworthy regional results include (1) the important role of SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth) for countries in the former Soviet Union; (2) the relative importance of SDG 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure) for nations in Europe and the MENA region; and (3) SDG 10 (reducing inequality) appears to only matter significantly for the European nations. These regional correlations need to be taken with due caution given the relatively low number of observations available but, taken together, Table 6.3 paints a vivid picture of the varied and complex ways in which the SDGs relate to human well-being and how these pathways are highly context specific.

Are there trade-offs between the SDGs and human well-being?

Table 6.3 reveals that SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production) and SDG 13 (climate action) have, in fact, strong negative correlations with self-reported measures of human well-being. Moreover, these negative correlations appear to hold for each one of the world's regions and therefore merit more academic and policy attention.

Studying the indicators underlying the SDG Index shows that SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production) is determined by municipal solid waste, electronic-waste generated, production-based and imported SO2-emissions, nitrogen production footprint, net imported emissions of reactive nitrogen, and non-recycled municipal solid waste. Based on these indicators, SDG 12 may be highly correlated with the quantity of waste created through consumption and production rather than the proportion of responsible production and consumption. Since economically developed nations produce more waste but also tend to have higher levels of well-being, this may help explain why SDG 12 has such a strong negative correlation with well-being. If responsible consumption and production is also taken to mean less consumption and production in the first place, it tends to go hand in hand with economic contexts that are generally lower in terms of well-being. However, this is not what we find to be the case when regressing SDG 12 on well-being controlling for the general level of economic development. As Table 6.4 suggests, SDG 12 continues to correlate negatively with SWB even when taking into account the general level of economic development as measured using GDP per capita. This analysis therefore suggests that advancing responsible consumption and production comes with a trade-off in terms of (short-term) well-being as self-reported by citizens.

SDG 13 (climate action) is determined by per capita energy-related CO2 emissions, technology adjusted imported CO2 emissions per 100,000 people, people affected by climate related disasters, CO2 emissions embodied in fossil fuel exports, and effective carbon rate from all non-road energy excluding emissions from biomass. As was the case with SDG 12, countries that are more economically developed tend to pollute more while also having higher well-being. Climate action here would imply not only qualitative actions to reduce CO2-emissions (while maintaining general production levels), but climate action would also benefit from quantitative reductions in productive capacity that would lead to structural economic changes that would be in tension with other drivers of well-being. Unlike SDG 12, however, we find that accounting for the general level of economic development turns a negative correlation into an insignificant one. As reported in Table 6.4, this suggests that the underlying measures for climate action are strongly correlated with the level of economic development in the first place which, in turn, drives the relationship with well-being (more so than climate action by itself).

Table 6.4: Regression analyses of SDG 12 and SDG 13 on well-being (controlling for GDP))

More generally, it is possible that neither of these environmental SDGs properly captures how people actually value the environment. The Environmental Protection Index (EPI) has a strong positive correlation with subjective well-being, as shown in Table 6.2. This is supported by earlier work finding that subjective well-being is negatively influenced by poor air quality, that people are willing to pay for observably cleaner air, and that time in nature enhances well-being and is necessary for humanity. These research insights indicate that well-being is positively correlated with the outcome of environmental policies, even if it is not necessarily positively correlated with the efforts required of the policies. A large-scale study assessed possible explanations for this environmental paradox, finding that it is plausible that (1) there is a time lag after ecosystem degradation before well-being is affected; (2) technology and innovation have to some extent decoupled well-being from nature; and that (3) well-being is dependent on provisioning services, such as food production, that are increasingly putting pressure on our ecosystem. Such observations may help explain why ecological degradation has not negatively impacted human well-being even though people depend on ecosystem services.

Trade-offs between the SDGs and SWB can also arise as a result of trade-offs between different SDGs. Arguably SDGs 11, 13, 14, 16, and 17 continue to have negative trade-offs and non-associations with other SDGs. The highly positive links between goals 11 and 16 and human well-being may possibly compensate for these intra-SDG trade-offs, but policy-makers may find pursuing SDGs 13, 14, and 17 more difficult due to the negative or insignificant correlation with the well-being of current generations. Needless to say, however, the urgency of climate change does require action to ensure the well-being of future generations.

Variance decomposition analysis of the SDGs in relation to well-being

In this section, we apply variance decomposition to explore the relative importance of each SDG in explaining the variance in well-being between countries. This method, called "dominance analysis", investigates the relative contribution to the variance explained in well-being (R2) for a given set of predictors-in this case the 17 SDGs. One important assumption being made in such an analysis is that it forces the SDGs to explain all of the variance in well-being between countries. There are also a number of important limitations in that it hinges on there being variance in the first place, and yet the measurements for some SDGs do not vary much. Moreover, we are limited in terms of number of observations as we can only consider the 149 countries available in the data (or less when looking at regions). In line with the SDG Index approach, we impute missing SDG values with regional values when necessary rather than lose observations.

Figure 6.2 presents the results of the variance decomposition and suggests large differences in how each SDG contributes to explaining the variance in well-being between countries. This figure paints a picture that aligns closely with the correlation coefficients reported in Table 6.3.

Figure 6.2: The relative importance of SDGs in explaining the variance in well-being between countries

SDGs 10, 14, 15 and 17 would appear to contribute negligibly to explaining variation in well-being across the globe. On the other hand, the greatest explanatory power seems to lie with SDGs 3, 8, 9, and 12. SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth), SDG 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), and SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production) each explain 10% or more of the variance. It is important to note, of course, that SDG 12 (as well as SDG 13) are negatively correlated with well-being, as was shown earlier on in Table 6.3.

Variance decomposition analysis of regional SDG groups in relation to well-being

In these analyses, we group the SDGs into Economic (4,8,9), Social (1,5,10), Health (3), Law (16), and Environmental goals (2, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15). Figure 6.3 first shows the results for how well these SDG groups explain the variance between all countries. In Figure 6.4 we show the results by region.

Figure 6.3: Relative importance of SDG groups in explaining the variance in well-being between countries

Figure 6.4: Relative importance of SDG groups in explaining regional well-being

The general takeaway from the regional variance decomposition analyses is that there is much regional heterogeneity hidden behind a global analysis, with the regional context driving which SDGs are most important in explaining the variance in well-being between countries in the region. In Europe (N=33), and especially in the countries of the former Soviet Union (N=15), we find the great importance of the Economic SDGs in explaining regional variation in well-being. In Asia (N=23) we find a fairly balanced role for the Economic, Law, Social, and Health SDG groups in explaining regional differences in well-being. In the Americas (N=23) we find that Health plays the most important role in driving regional variation in well-being. The results for Sub-Saharan Africa (N=38) point towards the Social and Economic SDGs as playing the largest roles in explaining regional differences, but the Environmental SDGs also play a large role, especially in comparison to other regions. For the countries in the MENA region (N=17) we find a more balanced picture with the Health and Economic SDGs driving most of the variation, but an important role as well for the Social, Law, and Environmental SDGs.

It is important to reiterate that these variance decomposition analyses are limited by their methods and the number of observations. As such these results are exploratory and solely aim to stimulate thinking and further research on how the SDGs relate to human well-being-and how general analyses may hide important heterogeneity when looking at individual SDGs and in the context of different regions.

A simple baseline theory of SDGs and SWB

In this section, we propose a simple conceptual model of how the SDGs may shape well-being by way of the six well-being determinants as laid out in Chapter 2. These are Income, Social support, Generosity, Freedom to make life choices, Trust in government and business, and Healthy life expectancy.

The arrows in the model represent linear correlations between the five aforementioned SDG groups and the six well-being determinants. We show those relationships that we believe best highlight the most relevant pathways. In the Appendix, we present a general correlation table for all possible links. In terms of the determinants of well-being we find that the strongest correlations to well-being are Income per capita, Social support, and Health. This is intuitive, but is also a result of having good measures for these features. Freedom to make life choices and Trust in government come in next. The measure for Values is insignificant but we note that this is likely to be a result of generosity being very hard to measure.

Three of the SDG groups have strong positive correlations with Income per capita. Unsurprisingly, these are the groups that capture Economic features (SDGs 4, 8 and 9), Law (SDG 16), and Health (SDG 3). The goals representing the Environment (SDGs 2, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15) also have a positive correlation with Income per capita but we note that it is lower at 0.17. These pathways are a very important route for the SDGs to affect well-being because of the strong relationship between Income per capita and SWB. Social support, another strong determinant of SWB, is very positively related to goals representing social equality (SDGs 1, 5, and 10). Counter-intuitively, we note the lower correlations between this group and the SWB determinants of Values (Generosity) and Freedom to make life choices. The Rule of Law has a similar relationship with these three determinants as the Social SDGs group. Finally, the health determinant has a correlation of close to 1 with the Health SDG. We see that the Environmental group is quite important for Health too with a positive correlation of 0.63.

Figure 6.5: A simple pathway model for how the SDGs relate to well-being

Conclusion

This chapter has studied the empirical relationship between the SDGs and subjective well-being using data from the SDG Index and the Gallup World Poll. There is a strong correlation between achieving sustainable development and self-reported measures of well-being. Moreover, the analyses indicate that there are increasing marginal returns to sustainable development in terms of well-being.

Splitting the SDG Index into its 17 component goals allowed for analysing possible trade-offs between sustainable development and well-being. While most SDGs were positively correlated with well-being, goal 12 (responsible consumption and production) and goal 13 (climate action) were negatively correlated with SWB. However, the Environmental Protection Index is positively correlated with SWB, suggesting that the outcome of environmental policies is positively correlated with SWB, even if the process of reaching those policies may not be. This raises the challenge of policy action in these areas since they run counter to the subjective well-being of important groups in society. Given that lowering well-being erodes the support for incumbent governments this makes such policies even more difficult to implement. A recent report by the OECD attempts to address this challenge by proposing climate change mitigation through a well-being lens and putting people at the centre of climate action.

We have studied the link between the SDGs and SWB of the current generations. Future research should investigate the extent to which self-reported SWB metrics account for the well-being of future generations. This is especially relevant when considering SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production) and SDG 13 (climate action). Implementing these policies requires intergenerational reciprocity, which has been shown to depend on the behaviour of previous generations. To be able to assess the extent to which self-reported measures of well-being integrate longer-term aspects of well-being, including the well-being of future generations, is a particularly important limitation for this line of work.

This work also does not address international dynamics. The sustainable development of a country may come at a cost to other countries, or the actions of countries may influence the well-being in others. Furthermore, the model of linking SDGs with well-being assumes only direct relationships. Some recent work shows that addressing SDGs have knock-on effects for other SDGs. Another dynamic that has not been discussed is the extent to which the well-being of populations may itself exert influence on their country's approach to development. Changes in well-being have been documented to have wide-ranging effects on economic, social, and health outcomes. These objective benefits of subjective well-being include pro-social behaviours. As such, there is an urgent need to combine the SDG and SWB research and policy agendas to generate solutions that work for both people and planet and help accelerate sustainable development.

References

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Endnotes
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