Trump canceled the ‘National Nature Assessment.’ Scientists want to publish it anyway

After months of work, a group of scientists were close to publishing a U.S. government study called the National Nature Assessment. Experts in various fields had measured the relative health of lands, water and wildlife. One of the goals was to gauge what changes in the natural world might mean for humans. Then, President Trump took office for a second time. Within days, the first draft of the study was shelved.

Howard Frumkin is a professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington School of Public Health. He told KUOW’s Kim Malcolm about his work on the study.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: Can you take us back and just briefly explain why there was a federal effort to compile this assessment in the first place?

Howard Frumkin: Imagine you have something very precious, but you don't know how much of it you have, you don't know where it is, you don't know if it's trending up or down, you don't exactly know how it's delivering benefits to you. You can't really take good care of it. That's our situation with nature across the country. We have good data on our transportation infrastructure, on our economy, on the way our kids do in schools, but we don't have that same comprehensive picture about the state of nature nationally, and that's what the National Nature Assessment was intended to do.

Tell us some of the topics you were looking at.

Well, it's almost what anybody who would design a project like this would include. There's an assessment of the state of nature, the state of our forests and rivers and coastlines. There is a section on the role of nature in supporting our economy, a section on nature as cultural heritage, a section on the relationship between nature and climate change, an important section on trends in nature, on things that are getting either better or less good. The part that I worked on is on the benefits of nature for human health and well-being.

It sounds like an incredibly broad field. How did you get specific about it? How did you create the study or design it?

The overall outline for the study was put together by a group working out of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Each of the individual chapters was given a lot of latitude to decide what it wanted to cover. In the health and well-being chapter, for example, we paid attention to the benefits of nature in reducing stress, in promoting physical activity, in connecting people with each other and promoting socializing, and then lots of more secondary benefits that we're just learning about, from better bone density to better birth outcomes. Living in green neighborhoods or having contact with nature can provide a wide range of health benefits. So, we carefully tabulated as many of those as there was evidence to support.

Let's fast forward to the point where you heard that this study was not going to be published. How did you learn that?

There was some gossip going around for a few days shortly after the inauguration, and then we all got an email from Phil Levin, the guy who was leading the effort, saying that it had been terminated.

That must have been a bit of a surprise to hear, or was it?

Well, it's a disappointment, because nature is not a political issue. We know that across the political spectrum, in blue jurisdictions and red jurisdictions, Americans really care about our natural heritage. The outdoor recreation economy is an economic powerhouse from coast to coast, irrespective of the politics of the state. This is something people really like. It's one of those things that can be a unifying force across the country. So, it was a real disappointment to see the study ended, to see it kind of swept up in the political events that are happening these days.

I understand some of the scientists involved in this study want to see it published anyway. What would it take to do that without having the government involved?

Well, it's not hard to imagine pivoting from having a government report to having a non-governmental report. Commissions of scientists issue reports all the time, and that's what a lot of us are thinking hard about how to do now. We want to maintain the same standards of academic rigor. We want to be accountable to the public. We want to engage public voices. We'll be able to have fewer rounds of government review and we’ll be able to be more nimble. So in some ways, we see this as an opportunity.

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