An Index of Human Well-Being for the U.S.: A TRIO Approach

Eco-decisional well-being networks as a tool for community decision support

Community decision making based on the sustainability of ecosystem services is an integrated process that involves multiple complex decisions and is greatly aided by an understanding of how those decisions are interrelated. The interrelatedness of decisions can be understood and even measured based on connections between actions and services and influence of services on domains of human well-being. These connections can be formed into a network structure so that quantifiable properties of networks can be applied to understanding decision impacts. We developed an eco-decisional network based on weighted social-ecological networks as a tool for integrated decision making based on ecosystem services and human well-being. Nodes are actions, services, or domains of human well-being and they are linked by weighted influence derived from community stakeholder input. Examination of the eco-decisional network, as well as comparison to pattern in the random networks, suggest there are important patterns of influence among different influence pathways from actions to community well-being, which describe community priorities and define unique roles through which chosen sets of actions can influence human well-being. The eco-decisional network is generalized across communities but can also be made community specific, which provides a tool for comparison between communities in decisional priorities (network properties), as well as comparisons between proposed actions within a community (network paths). The well-studied properties of networks, well-established network theory, as well as established network metrics make this approach promising for application to integrated decision making and for communicating possible outcomes to stakeholders. The result is a guidance tool for connecting propose actions to ecosystem services and human well-being.

Development of Community-Level Capacity of Resilience to Natural Hazards for Environmental- and Social-Justice-Challenged Communities: 1. Approach, Concepts, and Assessment of Existing Information

Impoverished and under-served communities are often exposed to the worst environmental and climate hazards. Identifying these communities and building their resilience capacity to withstand such hazards is a vital justice aspect of environmental management. Building community resilience requires five activities: (1) examination of existing information, (2) community engagement and assessment of local knowledge, (3) development of reasonable strategies to build resilience, (4) implementation and these strategies, and (5) monitoring and transability of the process. This manuscript examines the first component of this process. The attributes of multiple parishes in Louisiana are examined using available data and existing models of human well-being, community resilience, and environmental/climate/socioeconomic justice. These existing models and tools were used to determine parish-level resilience to natural hazards including flooding, hurricanes, and other potential natural climatic hazards in central Louisiana (U.S.). Through consultation with state officials and local community groups, candidate environmental justice (EJ) and social justice (SJ) communities were selected to develop resilience capacity enhancement plans to address potential adverse parish and community outcomes of natural hazard events. Of the available parishes, St. Helena Parish was selected as an entity that would significantly benefit from resilience capacity building. The remaining two activities, community engagement and strategy development, will be examined in sister manuscripts. Continuing studies, to be described elsewhere, will describe community engagement and the determination of strategies, implementation plans, and the monitoring of the success of these strategic implementations.

Understanding the Impact of Green Human Resource Management Practices and Dynamic Sustainable Capabilities on Corporate Sustainable Performance: Evidence From the Manufacturing Sector

Pakistan ranks as the eighth most vulnerable country on the 2021 global climate change vulnerability index. Partially, this perilous position is attributed to unsustainable practices in the large-scale manufacturing sector since its contribution to carbon emission is among the highest in the economy. These serious environmental challenges impede the attainment of sustainable development goals that concern responsible consumption and production. In manufacturing organizations, there are an ongoing debate regarding sustainable human resource management (HRM) determinants, which can promote sustainable performance. In this regard, green human resource management (GHRM) practices and dynamic sustainable capabilities are significant components as they have a unique role in transforming corporations into sustainable organizations. However, there is a dearth of evidence regarding the impact of individual GHRM practices, such as green recruitment and selection, green pay and reward, and sustainable capabilities like monitoring and re-configuration, in improving the corporate environmental and social performance. Hence, an empirical investigation regarding the association among these macro-level components with the corporate environmental and social performance through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is conducted. The findings inferred from 396 employees affiliated with six large-scale industries substantiate the main hypotheses of this study. It is empirically confirmed that GHRM and dynamic sustainable capabilities significantly and positively impact corporate sustainable performance. This research contributes to the literature by employing dynamic capabilities approach and a dynamic resource-based view (RBV) to explicate how corporations can benefit from the interplay of sustainable capabilities and GHRM functions. Hence, in the absence of a significant predictive model, this research is the first of its kind to isolate macro-level antecedents of sustainable HRM to find their impact on corporate sustainable performance in a developing country context. The study recommends that the management should prioritize the acquisition of monitoring capabilities and hiring environmentally conscious employees to achieve social equity and ecological conservation goals.

Measuring economic, social and environmental wellbeing of Asian economies

This study aims to address the economic, social, and environmental wellbeing issues simultaneously by measuring the carbon intensity of wellbeing (CIWB) of Asian economies employing Prais-Winsten and pooled OLS estimator. The measure of CIWB is made taking into account a ratio of the two indicators-CO₂ emissions per capita and life expectancy at birth. There is a paucity of studies that concentrate on human and social wellbeing indicators (i.e., water, sanitation, life expectancy) together applying the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Therefore, we have also investigated the EKC hypothesis as this theory hypothesizes the link involving human and environmental wellbeing and development. The findings utilizing the two econometric techniques indicate that in both the estimation models urban population access to an improved water source and total population access to improved water source has consistently negative and significant effects on CIWB. The fertility rate and prevalence of HIV pose no threat to CIWB. These findings demonstrate that social and human wellbeing indicators of the Asian economies are sustainable to this moment as they are lowering CIWB which is desirable. Contrary, GDP per capita, exports as a percent of GDP, and urban population have a significant and positive impact on CIWB which poses a challenge for the sustainability issue. We also have found the existence of the EKC hypothesis indicating environmental quality will increase past a turning point. The findings of the paper are well matched with the view of the "Economic and ecological modernization" theory and "human ecology" theory.

Downscaling a Human Well-Being Index for Environmental Management and Environmental Justice Applications in Puerto Rico

Human well-being is often an overarching goal in environmental decision-making, yet assessments are often limited to economic, health, or ecological endpoints that are more tangible to measure. Composite indices provide a comprehensive approach to measuring well-being in terms of multi-dimensional components, such as living standards, health, education, safety, and culture. For example, the Human Well-Being Index (HWBI) framework, initially developed for the U.S. fifty states, was recently applied to quantify human well-being for Puerto Rico. However, the paucity of data at spatial scales finer than state or county levels, particularly for social metrics, poses a major limitation to quantifying well-being at neighborhood-scales relevant to decision-making. Here we demonstrate a spatial interpolation method to fill in missing fine-scale data where coarser-scale data is available. Downscaling from municipio (i.e., county-equivalent) to census-tract revealed a greater range of variability in well-being scores across Puerto Rico, in particular, a larger proportion of low well-being scores. Furthermore, while some components of wellbeing (e.g., Education, Health, Leisure Time, Safety and Security, Social Cohesion) showed consistent improvement over time from 2000-2017 across Puerto Rico, others (e.g., Connection to Nature, Cultural Fulfillment, Living Standards) were variable among census tracts, increasing for some but declining for others. We use a case study in the San Juan Bay estuary watershed to illustrate how approaches to quantify baseline levels of well-being can be used to explore potential impacts of management actions on communities, including to identify environmental justice inequalities among neighborhoods. Spatial clustering analysis was used to identify statistically significant cold or hot spots in well-being. This study demonstrates how indicators of well-being, coupled with interpolation methods to overcome limitations of data availability, can help to monitor long-term changes over time and to better communicate the potential value of ecosystem restoration or resource management.

A Community EcoHealth Index from EnviroAtlas Ecosystem Services Metrics

Human health is inextricably tied to ecosystem services (ES), including those associated with greenspace in urban communities. EnviroAtlas provides close to 100 maps of ES metrics based on high-resolution land cover data in featured communities across the contiguous United States. Using selected EnviroAtlas ES metrics, a Community EcoHealth Index (CEHI) was created based on an ecohealth framework including health promotion and hazard buffering domains. Aggregation of eight selected ES metrics in these domains entailed a weighted distance measure, where objective, data-driven weights were generated. CEHI was calculated by Census Block Group (CBG) at both the local level and the national level for 22 EnviroAtlas communities. Results were mapped to show one- to five-star CBGs or neighborhoods within and across all 22 featured communities. At the national level, CEHI favors communities in forested ecoregions. The local version of CEHI is more appropriate to inform social, economic, and environmental decision-making for improving community ES associated with human health.

Measuring Community Resilience to Natural Hazards: The Natural Hazard Resilience Screening Index (NaHRSI)-Development and Application to the United States

Natural disasters often impose significant and long-lasting stress on financial, social, and ecological systems. From Atlantic hurricanes to Midwest tornadoes to Western wildfires, no corner of the United States is immune from the threat of a devastating natural hazard event. Across the nation, there is a recognition that the benefits of creating environments resilient to adverse natural hazard events help promote and sustain county and community success over time. The challenge for communities is in finding ways to balance the need to preserve the socioecological systems on which they depend in the face of constantly changing natural hazard threats. The Natural Hazard Resilience Screening Index (NaHRSI; previously entitled Climate Resilience Screening Index) has been developed as an endpoint for characterizing county resilience outcomes that are based on risk profiles and responsive to changes in governance, societal, built, and natural system characteristics. The NaHRSI framework serves as a conceptual roadmap showing how natural hazard events impact resilience after factoring in county characteristics. By evaluating the factors that influence vulnerability and recoverability, an estimation of resilience can quantify how changes in these characteristics will impact resilience given specific hazard profiles. Ultimately, this knowledge will help communities identify potential areas to target for increasing resilience to natural hazard events.

Application of the Human Well-Being Index to Sensitive Population Divisions: A Children's Well-Being Index Development

The assessment of community well-being is critical as an end-point measure that will facilitate decision support and assist in the identification of sustainable solutions to address persistent problems. While the overall measure is important, it is equally vital to distinguish variations among groups within the population who may be impacted in a different manner. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) developed the Human Well-Being Index (HWBI), as a way of measuring these outcomes and assessing community characteristics. The HWBI approach produces a suite of indicators, domains and a final composite index appropriate for characterizing well-being of a population. While generalized approaches are needed, it is important to also recognize variations in well-being across community enclaves. This paper presents an adaption of the HWBI for child populations to test the applicability of the index framework to specific community enclaves. First, an extensive literature review was completed to ensure the theoretical integrity of metric and indicator substitutions from the original HWBI framework. Metric data were then collected, refined, imputed where necessary and evaluated to confirm temporal and spatial availability. A Children's Well-Being Index (CWBI) value, representing the same indicators and domains of well-being as the original HWBI, was calculated for the population under age 18 across all US counties for 2011. Implications of this research point to an effective, holistic end-point measure that can be tracked over time. Similarly, there is great potential for the application of the original HWBI method to other statistical population segments within the greater US population. These adaptations could help identify and close gaps in equity of resource distribution among these groups.

A Keyword Approach to Finding Common Ground in Community-Based Definitions of Human Well-Being

Ecosystem-based management involves the integration of ecosystem services and their human beneficiaries into decision making. This can occur at multiple scales; addressing global issues such as climate change down to local problems such as flood protection and maintaining water quality. At the local scale it can be challenging to achieve a consistent and sustainable outcome across multiple communities, particularly when they differ in resource availability and management priorities. A key requirement for consistent decision support at the community level is to identify common community objectives, as these can form the basis for readily transferable indices of ecosystem benefit and human well-being. We used a keyword-based approach to look for common terminology in community fundamental objectives as a basis for transferable indices of human well-being and then compared those commonalities to community demographics, location, and type. Analysis centered on strategic planning documents readily available from coastal communities in the conterminous United States. We examined strategic planning documents based on eight domains of human well-being, and found that Living Standards and Safety and Security were the most commonly addressed domains, and Health and Cultural Fulfillment were the least. In comparing communities, regional differences were observed in only one well-being domain, Safety and Security, while community type yielded significant differences in five of the eight domains examined. Community type differences followed an urban to rural trend with urban communities focusing on Education and Living Standards, and more rural communities focused on Social Cohesion and Leisure Time. Across all eight domains multivariate analysis suggested communities were distributed along two largely orthogonal gradients; one between Living Standards and Leisure Time and or Connection to Nature, and a second between Safety and Security and Social Priorities (Education/Health/Culture/Social Cohesion). Overall these findings demonstrate the use of automated keyword analysis for obtaining information from community strategic planning documents. Moreover, the results indicate measures and perceptions of well-being at the local scale differ by community type. This information could be used in management of ecosystem services and development of indices of community sustainability that are applicable to multiple communities with similar demographics, regional location, and type.

Conceptualizing Holistic Community Resilience to Climate Events: Foundation for a Climate Resilience Screening Index

The concept of resilience has been evolving over the past decade as a way to address the current and future challenges nations, states and cities face from a changing climate. Understanding how the environment (natural and built), climate event risk, societal interactions and governance reflect community resilience for adaptive management is critical for envisioning urban and natural environments that can persist through extreme weather events and longer-term shifts in climate. To be successful, this interaction of these five domains must result in maintaining quality of life and ensuring equal access to the benefits or the protection from harm for all segments of the population. An exhaustive literature review of climate resilience approaches was conducted examining the two primary elements of resilience - vulnerability and recoverability. The results of this review were examined to determine if any existing frameworks addressed the above five major areas in an integrated manner. While some aspects of a resilience model were available for existing sources, no comprehensive approach was available. A new conceptual model for resilience to climate events is proposed that incorporates some available structures and addresses these five domains at a national, regional, state and county spatial scale for a variety of climate-induced events ranging from superstorms to droughts and their concomitant events such as wildfires, floods, and pest invasions. This conceptual model will be developed in a manner that will permit comparisons among governance units (e.g., counties) and permit an examination of best reliance practices.

A Conceptual Model to Assess Stress-Associated Health Effects of Multiple Ecosystem Services Degraded by Disaster Events in the Gulf of Mexico and Elsewhere

Few conceptual frameworks attempt to connect disaster-associated environmental injuries to impacts on ecosystem services (the benefits humans derive from nature) and thence to both psychological and physiological human health effects. To our knowledge, this study is one of the first, if not the first, to develop a detailed conceptual model of how degraded ecosystem services affect cumulative stress impacts on the health of individual humans and communities. Our comprehensive Disaster-Pressure State-Ecosystem Services-Response-Health (DPSERH) model demonstrates that oil spills, hurricanes, and other disasters can change key ecosystem components resulting in reductions in individual and multiple ecosystem services that support people's livelihoods, health, and way of life. Further, the model elucidates how damage to ecosystem services produces acute, chronic, and cumulative stress in humans which increases risk of adverse psychological and physiological health outcomes. While developed and initially applied within the context of the Gulf of Mexico, it should work equally well in other geographies and for many disasters that cause impairment of ecosystem services. Use of this new tool will improve planning for responses to future disasters and help society more fully account for the costs and benefits of potential management responses. The model also can be used to help direct investments in improving response capabilities of the public health community, biomedical researchers, and environmental scientists. Finally, the model illustrates why the broad range of potential human health effects of disasters should receive equal attention to that accorded environmental damages in assessing restoration and recovery costs and time frames.

People and water: Exploring the social-ecological condition of watersheds of the United States

A recent paradigm shift from purely biophysical towards social-ecological assessment of watersheds has been proposed to understand, monitor, and manipulate the myriad interactions between human well-being and the ecosystem services that watersheds provide. However, large-scale, quantitative studies in this endeavour remain limited. We utilised two newly developed 'big-data' sets-the Index of Watershed Integrity (IWI) and the Human Well-Being Index (HWBI)-to explore the social-ecological condition of watersheds throughout the conterminous U.S., and identified environmental and socio-economic influences on watershed integrity and human well-being. Mean county IWI was highly associated with ecoregion, industry-dependence, and state, in a spatially-explicit regression model (R2 = 0.77, P < 0.001), whereas HWBI was not (R2 = 0.31, P < 0.001). HWBI is likely influenced by factors not explored here, such as governance structure and formal and informal organisations and institutions. 'Win-win' situations in which both IWI and HWBI were above the 75th percentile were observed in much of Utah, Colorado, and New Hampshire, and lessons from governance that has resulted in desirable outcomes might be learnt from here. Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, along with large parts of the desert southwest, had intact watersheds but low HWBI, representing areas worthy of further investigation of how ecosystem services might be utilised to improve well-being. The Temperate Prairies and Central USA Plains had widespread areas of low IWI but high HWBI, likely a result of historic exploitation of watershed resources to improve well-being, particularly in farming-dependent counties. The lower Mississippi Valley had low IWI and HWBI, which is likely related to historical (temporal) and upstream (spatial) impacts on both watershed integrity and well-being. The results emphasise the importance of considering spatial and temporal trade-offs when utilising the ecosystem services provided by watersheds to improve human well-being.