Evaluation for planetary health

Sustainability Science, 2006

Sustainability science is emerging as a transdisciplinary effort to come to grips with the muchneeded symbiosis between human activity and the environment. While there is recognition that conventional economic growth must yield to policies that foster sustainable development, this has not yet occurred on any broad scale. Rather, there is clear evidence that the Earth's ecosystems and landscapes continue to degrade as a consequence of the cumulative impact of human activities. Taking an ecohealth approach to sustainability science provides a unique perspective on both the goals and the means to achieve sustainability. The goals should be the restoration of full functionality to the Earth's ecosystems and landscapes, as measured by the key indicators of health: resilience, organization, vitality (productivity), and the absence of ecosystem distress syndrome. The means should be the coordinated (spatially and temporally) efforts to modify human behaviors to reduce cumulative stress impacts. Achieving ecosystem health should become the cornerstone of sustainability policy-for healthy ecosystems are the essential precondition for achieving sustainable livelihoods, human health, and many other societal objectives, as reflected in the Millennium Development Goals. Keywords Ecosystem health Á Sustainability science Á Transdisciplinarity Á Ecosystem distress syndrome Á Ecological indicators Á Human activity and the environment The nature of sustainability science ''Sustainability science'' is, at root, a transdisciplinary effort to come to grips with one of the most perplexing issues of our time: how to achieve a symbiotic relationship between biological and social-cultural systems so that future options are not foreclosed. It is not a ''science'' by any usual definition-that is, it is not yet a set of principles by which knowledge of sustainability may be systematically built. Rather, it consists of a plethora of ideas and perspectives, sometimes conflicting, by which one might hope to achieve a viable future for humankind. All approaches recognize, in one way or another, that ''our common future'' depends critically upon preserving the life-giving functions of the Earth's ecosystems, landscapes, and biosphere. To achieve this requires the deepening of our understanding of the linkages between the ''global system'' (the planetary base for human survival), the ''social system'' (the political, economic, industrial, and other human-devised structures that provide the societal basis of human existence), and the ''human system'' (the sum total of all factors impacting the health of humans) (Komiyama and Takeuchi 2006). While, at present, there is no generally accepted methodology for obtaining the much-needed symbiosis between nature and culture, it is recognized that knowledge from many disciplines has a critical role to play in working towards this goal. The key objective is

International Journal of Health Promotion and Education, 2021

Since the emergence of the SARS-COV2 pandemic, numerous scholars have highlighted the inextricable relationships between pandemic emergence and human civilization's unhealthy relationship with the environment. Baybutt and Dooris (2021), highlight five possible strategies for engaging with the complexity of the pandemic and the role of public health therein. One recommendation is to leverage the potential of eco-social approaches to public health such as OneHealth, Ecohealth and Planetary Health. In this commentary, we seek to build on this recommendation. While a full review of these concepts is beyond the scope of this commentary (readers can see Buse et al., 2018; Oestreicher et al. 2018 for a more fulsome description of these and related environmental health 'fields of practice'), here we point to the need for urgent actions that: 1) recognize the interconnected nature of human and ecological systems, and 2) provide co-benefits that are good for people and the planet. In the wake of nearly 50 years of robust evidence on human-induced environmental change-actions that accelerate harmful ecological change (e.g. ocean acidification, climate change, biodiversity loss) (IPCC, n.d.; Millennium Assessment Board 2005)there remains a gulf in actions which effectively redress these challenges. To date, actions that are occurring are too little, too late. Suddenly, in the wake of public health emergency orders that sought to limit the movement of human populations to reduce virus transmission, COVID-19 control measures reduced global travel, and environmentalists were cautiously optimistic that this 'pause' in emissions could have positive environmental implications. For example, air quality improved in many localities and likely averted thousands of premature deaths; yet our overall reduction to GHGs that cause climate change was only in the realm of about 7% (Reilly, Henry Chen, and Jacoby 2021). These actions, though unprecedented, made only a temporary difference and were not on a scale that moves the needle on redressing climate change. As economies seek to roar back into action, there is little evidence of the will and intent to integrate the principles of transformative sustainability and social justice into 'restart plans', even though stark social and global inequities deepened during the pandemic and significant environmental events are cascading (UNEP, 2020; Whitmee et al. 2015). How can eco-social approaches to public health generate positive momentum in protecting and promoting health from the local to planetary level for current and future generations? Eco-social approaches are those that which attend to the reciprocal relationship between ecological and social change, and which prioritize rapid planetary-scale transitions to promote human health and societal stability (Hancock 2015; Parkes et al. 2020). This thinking is embedded in the need for "supportive environments" as identified by the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, and yet health promotion has yet to fully

2021

2017

The United Nations has made a commitment for sustainable development. An important component of this is a healthy environment. But what exactly is a healthy environment? Environmental health specialists typically focus on occupational exposures in workers; the field mainly addresses the abiotic (i.e. non-living) aspects of environments. Ecosystem health addresses biotic (i.e. living) aspects of environments. Merging these two realms is essential for sustainable development but will be challenging because the fields are so different. The United Nations, individual countries, and schools of public health could do much to help merge these realms by implementing environmental/ecosystem health into their missions and curriculums.

Challenges

I have been involved in studying and working within what is now called the Anthropocene for almost 50 years, and in all that time, not only have we failed to make much progress, but the state of the Earth’s ecosystems has generally worsened. Yet somehow we must create a world in which everyone on Earth has good health and a good quality of life—a matter of social justice—while living within the physical and ecological constraints of the one small planet that is our home; this is the focus of the new field of planetary health. Our worsening situation is not due to lack of knowledge, science and technology; in broad terms, we knew most of the challenges and many of the needed solutions back in the 1970s. Instead, the challenges we face are social, rooted in cultural values, political ideologies, legal and economic systems, ethical principles and spiritual/religious beliefs. Therefore, we have to move beyond science and technology and address these broader socio-cultural issues by enga...

The Science of the total environment, 2010

Many environmental risks are multi-faceted and their health consequences can be far-ranging in both time and space. It can be a challenging task to develop informed policies for such risks. Integrated environmental health impact assessment aims to support policy by assessing environmental health effects in ways that take into account the complexities and uncertainties involved. For such assessment to be successful, a clear and agreed conceptual framework is needed, which defines the issue under consideration and sets out the principles on which the assessment is based. Conceptual frameworks facilitate involvement of stakeholders, support harmonized discussions, help to make assumptions explicit, and provide a framework for data analysis and interpretation. Various conceptual frameworks have been developed for different purposes, but as yet no clear taxonomy exists. We propose a three-level taxonomy of conceptual frameworks for use in environmental health impact assessment. At the fi...

Challenges, 2018

inVIVO Planetary Health is a progressive, humanist scientific movement promoting both evidence and advocacy around concepts of planetary health which denote the interdependence between human health and place at all scales. Our seventh annual conference was held in Canmore, Alberta 4-6th April 2018, themed “Transforming Life: Unify Personal, Public, and Planetary Health” included diverse topics and perspectives to emphasise the interdependent vitality of all natural and anthropogenic ecosystems—social, political and otherwise. A key outcome of this meeting was the The Canmore Declaration: Statement of Principles for Planetary Health (published separately) which underscores that improving the health of all systems depends on: mutualistic values; planetary consciousness; advocacy; unity of purpose; recognition of biopsychosocial interdependence; emotional bonds between people and the land; efforts to counter elitism, social dominance and marginalization; meaningful cross-sectoral and c...

European journal of public health, 2020

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015 opened new opportunities to work towards healthy environments through 'whole of government' and 'whole of society' approaches. It created a strong policy platform that acknowledges health as a result and an enabler of sustainable policies across all sectors of government. Five years into the process, an initial analysis of emerging trends indicates that, despite some encouraging developments in policy as well as overall progress in economy and technology, there remains a gap between rhetoric, ambition and reality. In particular, the monitoring system for environment and health-related sustainable development goals (SDGs) and targets requires further development; inequalities in environment and health persist and in some areas have increased; equity is not yet a central element of implementation and reporting on the achievement of the SDGs; and, most worrying of all, trends in key environmental indicators that are vital to the survival of the human species, such as those related to climate change and biodiversity, are still on an overall negative path. In summary, governments must significantly and rapidly increase action to secure the habitability and safety of planet Earth. The public health community assumes an unprecedented role in placing and maintaining health and equity at the heart of the political agenda. This demands new governance models conferring on the health sector a clear mandate and legitimacy to operate across sectors. It also requires enhancing capacities among health professionals to embrace this new level of complexity, understand the multiple links between sectoral policies and health, and successfully engage with other government sectors and stakeholders.

EcoHealth, 2015

Sustainability

Environmental health is at the intersection between health and the environment. However, it still has a recent (and narrow) history as a scientific area, mainly addressing human biomonitoring and toxicological issues. Only recently additional environmental ‘layers’, other than the traditional chemical, biological and physical environmental determinants, have been considered. This broader perspective of environmental health also encompasses digital, psychosocial, political, socioeconomic and cultural determinants, all of them relevant when considering human health from a planetary health paradigm. This reflects the progressive adoption of a systemic perspective regarding the impact of gains for human health and well-being towards a sustainable environment. It also implies a multi-method and participatory approach to understand the intertwined relationship between environmental changes and human health. In this paper, the broader approach to environmental health is discussed in order ...