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. 2022 Sep 6;19(18):11171.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph191811171.

Cumulative Impacts of Diverse Land Uses in British Columbia, Canada: Application of the "EnviroScreen" Method

Chris G Buse  1 , Aita Bezzola  2   3 , Jordan Brubacher  1 , Tim K Takaro  1 , Arthur L Fredeen  3 , Margot W Parkes  2
Affiliations

Cumulative Impacts of Diverse Land Uses in British Columbia, Canada: Application of the "EnviroScreen" Method

Chris G Buse et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

(1) Objectives: Cumulative impacts refer to the legacies of land use decisions on environmental, community and health values. New integrative impact assessment tools are required to assess cumulative impacts on diverse values to meet sustainability goals in the 21st century. In this contribution, the CalEnviroScreen methodology-a screening tool capable of merging environmental, socioeconomic and health data-is applied to Local Health Areas in British Columbia, Canada. (2) Methods: The CalEnviroScreen is a method that standardizes environmental, socioeconomic and health data to depict an indicator's percentile rank in the distribution of all units of analysis. The method combines indicators to measure four dimensions of pressure: environmental exposures, environmental effects, socioeconomic conditions, and sensitive populations (i.e., health outcomes). We create two versions of EnviroScreen: one following the CalEnviroScreen suite of indicators, and another that uses nuanced indicators to approximate the realities of industrial land uses present in British Columbia. BCEnviroScreen scores are plotted by race/ethnicity to understand potential racial inequities in cumulative exposures. (3) Results: The BCEnviroScreen has a greater likelihood of quantifying the cumulative impacts of diverse industries and land uses present across resource-dependent parts of the province, relative to the more urban-centric CalEnviroScreen indicator suite. Analyzing the distribution of BCEnviroScreen scores by race/ethnicity suggests that visible minority populations may be inequitably exposed to cumulative impacts in BC. (4) Conclusion: EnviroScreen tools hold significant potential to influence Canadian environmental health policy. This research demonstrates the applicability of the tool to British Columbia and other jurisdictions, illustrates how indicators can be tailored to better represent regional context, and shows how the tool can be used to screen for potential environmental health injustices.

Keywords: BCEnviroScreen; CalEnviroScreen; cumulative impacts; environmental health justice; health impacts of land use change.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The five regional health authorities and corresponding Local Health Areas in British Columbia, Canada.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Comparing two treatments of EnviroScreen indicators on ‘pollution burden’ scores in British Columbia, Canada.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Comparing two treatments of EnviroScreen indicators on ‘population characteristics’ scores in British Columbia, Canada.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Comparing two treatments of EnviroScreen indicators on overall EnviroScreen scores in British Columbia, Canada.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Within group racial/ethnic proportions by decile of BCEnviroScreen score, expressed as a proportion of all Local Health Areas in British Columbia, Canada.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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