Planetary health indicators for the local level: opportunities and challenges in applying the happy planet index in Victoria, Australia

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, New Urban Agenda and Paris Agreement on Climate Change are blueprints for health promotion action that mandate human health is linked inextricably to the health of the environment. In the Anthropocene, new indicators are required to promote community engagement with, and measurement of, healthy and sustainable wellbeing for people and planet. This study explored the need for a metric such as the Happy Planet Index that explicitly links human health to health of the environment for a local level scale in Australia. The project arose from an international coalition of health promoters advocating for ‘planetary health’ approaches. Qualitative description methods guided the study design involving key informant interviews ( n = 17) and four focus groups ( n = 27 participants) with health and/or sustainability academics, practitioners and policy-makers. Document analysis of health and environment indices and policy mandates augmented the analysis. Qualitative content analysis techniques were used to analyse the findings. There was strong interest for a local level composite indicator, such as a rescaled Happy Planet Index (life expectancy × life satisfaction × equity adjustment/ecological footprint) for use at a local level. The value of a composite index was: its ability to promote community engagement with planetary health thinking; an advocacy tool for joint health and sustainability policy; to justify programs on health and environmental co-benefits; and to provide a mechanism for correlative comparisons between local governments and national comparisons. However, disciplinary silos currently limit partnerships for health promotion and planetary health and a local composite index could help bridge these divides.

Assessing sustainable development across Moldova using household and property composition indicators

Societies are committing themselves to sustainable development by attempting to improve environmental quality, social equity, and economic welfare. As such, there continues a plea for holistic development assessment across scales; however there remains no ideal technique for achieving sustainability on neither regional nor local scale. This paper approaches this problem by constructing a multi-metric assessment system for evaluating development patterns across the Republic of Moldova. The objectives of this study were: (1) to produce a local multi-metric index that captures the three major dimensions of sustainable development for Moldova; (2) to quantitatively evaluate the interrelatedness of sub-metrics used for creating the local composite index of sustainable development; and (3) to visualize and interpret spatial patterns of sustainable development across Moldova. A local sustainable development index (LSDI) was produced using household and property composition indicators from a 2005 demographic and health survey for the Republic of Moldova. Total sample size and aggregated spatial reference was 11,066 households and 399 geographic locations, respectively. The LSDI used a 15 submetric optimum, equal weighting, 1e5 ordinal scale standardization, and additive construction. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient analysis was used to evaluate sub-metric quantitative relationships, and local Moran's I-test to interpret geographic patterns of sustainable development. Results revealed that a wealth sub-index had greatest collinearity with other sub-metrics. Geographically, Moldova's improved sustainability levels were found in large urban areas, suggesting needed prioritization of development resources to the hinterland. For regional sustainable development assessments, this approach provides the transferability to other locally referenced datasets throughout the world.