Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) Accounting: Relating Ecological Integrity to Human Health and Well-being

Indicators are critical for monitoring the health of humans. They also are critical for monitoring the health of ecological systems, society, and the economy. Indicators provide vital signs to citizens and decision-makers about trends in the condition of human, social, and natural capital. Indicators of health can be used as an early warning system of risks to human health and hence of the sustainability of current trends in health. With the development of robust quantitative databases and information systems providing indicators of human, ecological, economic, and societal health, it is now possible to conduct more integrative analyses of the overall condition of societies, taking several determinants of human health into account. Many researchers have provided evidence that ecological integrity (EI) is rapidly declining. Some functional measures of EI have been developed (e.g., the Index of Mean Functional Integrity (Loucks et al. 1999) and the Index of Biological Integrity (Karr and Chu 1999), but these have not yet been sufficiently widely implemented to be of use epidemiologically. McMichael’s (1993) overview, given its health-based approach, is most useful for the epidemiologist. More recently, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (1998), the World Bank (1993), World Resources Institute (1998,1996), and the World Health Organization (WHO) (1992) have recognized the possible human health consequences of declining EI. Some authors