Livelihoods goal
Opened this issue · 2 comments
Hi everyone,
Following some discussion with Casey and Mel - I was encouraged to post on here to keep record and encourage wider discussion. I used the global model for the livelihoods sub-goal and local data for each of my Arctic regions which resulted in very scores. This is despite a wide range of different unemployment figures - Arctic Canada reaching as high as 17% and Arctic Norway as low as 2%. This is due to the goal model being that of no net loss. These scores being very high might then Jar with some Arctic areas as particularly in indigenous communities there are a huge problems with food security, poverty, access to sanitation and healthcare etc.
Initially we discussed using the NAIRU - non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment - which is sort of the 'normal' or 'expected' level of unemployment for each Arctic country which there is data for - to be used as a sort of penalty against Livelihood scores. This appears to be quite a straight forward option, although as Casey pointed out high unemployment in many indigenous communities is somewhat normal - as they tend to have a mixed economy of sharing/subsistence - rather than a typical economy as we might think about it. On the flip side, however, there are many indigenous people who would welcome economic investment, more jobs etc.
In light of this I was thinking that perhaps a reasonable proxy for livelihoods might be something like poverty rate or food security if I could get hold of reasonable data. The thinking behind this would be that if livelihoods (be them salaried jobs, mixed economy or subsistence) were working for people then poverty/food security rates would be lower. It would be great to hear your thoughts on this - I again feel this goal might grab some attention and near perfect scores across the board doesn't really tell a story. Of course no metric for this will be perfect and will require explanation of the issues of the region in the text.
Cheers!
Mike
@mburgass and all!
My recent thinking is that I don't think it's appropriate to apply an unemployment penalty (or, a related index such as poverty or food security) to the OHI livelihoods subgoal. But, I would be interested in hearing other's thoughts on this issue, given that I have not totally convinced myself.
Here is my thinking:
The benefits provided by the ocean are not necessarily linked to the overall unemployment/poverty/food insecurity within a country. It would make sense to include these metrics if we were developing an overall quality of life/happiness index, but that is not what we are doing. We are trying to determine how well oceans contribute to livelihoods regardless of how the rest of the economy is faring.
Imagine a country where oceans consistently supply 50% of the jobs, but unemployment is at 30%. To me, it seems like this country should get a high livelihoods score and should not be penalized for an otherwise failing economy. In this case, I would say the ocean is doing its part!!!