Time to treat the climate & nature crisis as one indivisible global health emergency

... over 200 health journals simultaneously publish editorial call

For those of us advocating that the climate and ecology crisis be addressed as one interconnected crisis, necessitating an interconnected response, the simultaneous editorial published in over 200 health journals is a very welcomed and vital initiative. 

The editorial calls on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals to recognise that climate change and biodiversity loss are indivisible crises and must be tackled together to preserve health and avoid catastrophe. 

This overall environmental crisis is now so severe as to be a global health emergency.

Commentary on the Built Environment

We, as the built environment sector, bear significant responsibility here, accounting for 40% of the issues outlined in this editorial. Importantly, we also possess the necessary skills, mindsets, and technologies to shift to being 40% of the solution. However, this transformation requires us to acknowledge the climate and ecological crisis as intertwined with a health crisis, impacting both human and planetary well-being. We are tooo siloed in our approach to (eg) carbon, biodibersity, social value and health, While we increasingly involve climate professionals, ecologists, and sociologists in our projects, we rarely integrate health professionals into teams. There's a pressing need for a shared educational and developmental pathway to address the overarching 'planetary crisis.

Salient points from the Health Journal Editiorial

“Only by considering climate and biodiversity as parts of the same complex problem … can solutions be developed that avoid maladaptation and maximize the beneficial outcomes.”

As the health world has recognised with the development of the concept of planetary health, the natural world is made up of one overall interdependent system.

Indigenous peoples’ approaches to land and sea management have a particularly important role in regeneration and continuing care.

Restoring one subsystem can help another— But actions that may benefit one subsystem can harm another.

Impacts on health

Human health is damaged directly by both the climate crisis and the nature crisis.

This indivisible planetary crisis will have major effects on health as a result of the disruption of social and economic systems … which in turn will lead to mass migration and conflict.

“Without nature, we have nothing,” was UN Secretary General António Guterres’s blunt summary at the biodiversity COP in Montreal last year. Even if we could keep global warming below an increase of 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, we could still cause catastrophic harm to health by destroying nature.

People losing contact with the natural environment and the declining loss in biodiversity have both been linked to increases in non-communicable, autoimmune, and inflammatory diseases and metabolic, allergic, and neuropsychiatric disorders.

For Indigenous people, caring for and connecting with nature is especially important for their health. Nature has also been an important source of medicines, and thus reduced diversity also constrains the discovery of new medicines.

Communities are healthier if they have access to high quality green spaces that help filter air pollution, reduce air and ground temperatures, and provide opportunities for physical activity.

Connection with nature reduces stress, loneliness, and depression while promoting social interaction. These benefits are threatened by the continuing rise in urbanisation.

… health effects of climate change and biodiversity loss will be experienced unequally between and within countries, with the most vulnerable communities often bearing the highest burden.

… Yet many commitments made at COPs have not been met. This has allowed ecosystems to be pushed further to the brink, greatly increasing the risk of arriving at “tipping points”— abrupt breakdowns in the functioning of nature. If these events were to occur, the impacts on health would be globally catastrophic.

This risk, combined with the severe impacts on health already occurring, means that the World Health Organization should declare the indivisible climate and nature crisis as a global health emergency.

“Critical leverage points include exploring alternative visions of good quality of life, rethinking consumption and waste, shifting values related to the human-nature relationship, reducing inequalities, and promoting education and learning.” All of these would benefit health.

Health professionals must be powerful advocates for both restoring biodiversity and tackling climate change for the good of health.

Political leaders must recognise both the severe threats to health from the planetary crisis and the benefits that can flow to health from tackling the crisis.

But, first, we must recognise this crisis for what it is: a global health emergency.