Well-Being Domains and Attributes, 2018

From international organizations to nations to specific regions and communities, well-being is increasingly cited as a concept that is integral to sustainable development. A growing body of literature identifies well-being as an important dimension of environmental sustainability and central to effective management of fisheries and marine ecosystems. This project builds on these efforts and provides a path forward in defining and incorporating well-being measures into salmon governance and decision-making arenas that continue to struggle with data availability and broad assumptions about important components of quality of life and well-being. We provide insights and clearly defined measures that are needed to create a baseline and monitor diverse components of well-being. Building on earlier efforts, our diverse team developed a collective definition of well-being as “a way of being with others that arises when people and ecosystems are healthy, and when individuals, families, and communities equitably practice their chosen ways of life and enjoy a self-defined quality of life now and for future generations.” In this dataset, we present a set of dimensions of well-being important to Alaska, and classify them into domains. These dimensions of well-being serve to inform our identification of more than 250 indicators of well-being in Alaska.