RESEARCH

Taking the Pulse of America’s Lands and Waters
Informing Environmental Policy

IF A FEW MEMBERS OF CONGRESS don’t know the unemployment rate, how can they make informed decisions about employment policy? How will they even know if unemployment is up or down? In fact, any legislation that seeks to improve the economic lives of our citizens will be a “shot in the dark” without the valuable information supplied by statistics, such as interest rates, inflation, and GDP. According to William Clark, professor of international science, public policy, and human development, a new report, The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems provides an authoritative “big picture” of the condition of the environment.

The report helps inform policy makers by providing a prescription for “taking the pulse” of America’s lands and waters. “Decision makers at the state, regional, and local level can benefit from a general understanding that is provided by this report’s suite of indicators,” says Clark, who chaired the committee at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, which published the report.

In the past, critics have argued that environmental policy has suffered because it has tended to be driven by headlines and crises. “Taking a step back with The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems,” says Clark, “allows us to determine where we’re doing better in the environment and where we’re doing worse. Equally important, it helps us to determine the areas where we don’t have enough information to make that call.”

For example, says Clark, local land-use planners can use this information to help shape area development and preservation, and local forest managers can compare the rates at which insects and disease are affected by national trends.

As a result of their work with experts from business, environmental organizations, universities, and federal, state, and local government agencies, Clark and his colleagues came up with indicators for the use and condition of America’s coasts and oceans, farmlands, forests, fresh waters, grasslands and shrublands, urban and suburban areas, and the nation as a whole.

Some of the results Clark’s team came up with surprised him, such as the effects of deforestation and forest clearing. “It turns out that in the United States the amount of area we have in farmland has essentially remained constant at a national level since the 1950s,” he says. He explains that there have been fluctuations in particular parts of the country.

The main conclusion of the report, he argues, is that it is possible to report on the state of an ecosystem in an unbiased manner by describing 10 general ecosystem characteristics — all of which were chosen because of their policy relevance. From physical conditions to plants and animals, from food, fiber, and water to chemical contaminants, these general ecosystem characteristics provide a very broad and succinct view of national ecosystem condition and use.

Clark and the others he worked with don’t make policy prescriptions based on their findings — in the same way that the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t say why the unemployment rate is up or down.

“Within microseconds of the release of [the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s reports on unemployment], scores of groups around our highly politicized, highly vocal country are telling you whether that’s too much unemployment or too little. And they’re telling you whose fault it is. There are great cat fights and nobody agrees,” says Clark. “But the interesting thing is that they don’t end up attacking the Bureau of Labor Statistics because they don’t like the number.”

According to Clark, the Heinz Center’s goal is to establish The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems as a long-running series, with new editions due every five years. An online version of this report, located at www.heinzctr.org/ecosystems, will be updated annually to include newly available data. — AC