An EcoHealth-based framework for State of Environment Reporting

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