Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Nature Matters

By Loise Ng'ang'a and Sumedha Roy

Industrialisation, urbanisation and globalisation have brought about revolutionary advances to the human race. These advances have resulted in increased food security, reduction in poverty rates, access to better health care and availability of more domesticated land. However, these have been achieved through intense exploitation of the earth’s natural resources, which has in turn jeopardised the health of our planet and its ability to sustain healthy human life. The writing on the wall has been evident for a long time, but has only recently gained public recognition after the publication of the report by the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health. 



Scientists have mapped out nine planetary boundaries within which human development must occur for our continued survival on earth. The shocking revelation is that four out of the nine boundaries have already been crossed, which just reiterates that we have reached a point where the depletion of natural resources poses immeseaurable danger to human health and the future of generations to come.



Dr. Subhrendu Pattanayak’s recent lecture highlighted the effect of various environmental damages and depletion of natural resources on health of the population. For example, frequent and intense forest fires started manually for clearing land for production has caused rising carbondioxide levels in the atmosphere, ultimately resulting in the infamous Indonesian haze. Such grave are the implications of this haze, that it has been shown to stunt height and lung function of children in conception or in their first few months. Breathing polluted air has also been correlated with an increased incidence of cardiovascular diseases, cancer and respiratory illnesses. According to WHO, approximately 7 million premature deaths were attributed to air pollution in 2012 alone.

Dr. Pattanayak also emphasized on the need to design and implement strategies that can ameliorate the situation, rather than simply acknowledging the problem of planetary health. Starting with a hypothesis and strategy at a smaller scale would allow testing of scalability and better utilization of resources. It is important to remember that the worst outcomes of this environmental destruction will have to be borne by the poor, as the wealthy and middle income populations have other means of escaping. This is just one of the many challenges in attracting funding and research towards a seemingly distant problem that disproportionately affects the population. He listed three main challenges that need to be adressed to protect human health against the threat posed by environmental changes. These include the lack of imagination, knowledge gap, and innovative research, all of which could be better utilized to identify the social and environmental drivers of health. Also, in order to overcome implementation failures, he suggested critically identifying how the various players in planetary health are interacting with drivers of the problem. For instance, promoting collaboration between governments, private sectors, non govermental organisations (NGOs) and the local community is absolutely fundamental for finding a solution to this omnious threat.

The fate of nature is intricately linked with ours. The state of nature, health of people, and economy of nations have always been inter-dependent, and hence there is an urgent need for all policies to take that into account. For the sake of the present and future generations, we must consciously devise strategies to conserve nature. 

6 comments:

  1. I agree with your statement that we need to promote collaboration between many different sectors of society. I think that the only way to truly change the direction in which we are headed is to get the vast majority of people on board with protecting and promoting planetary health. I also believe it could be one of the most successful ways to get a lot of people excited and passionate about sustainable practices. I will never understand why people are against this kind of promotion because ultimately right now and possibly/probably, this is the only place where we can and do live successfully.

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    1. Thanks for your comment, Elizabeth! I absolutely agree with you. The urgency of the matter has reached a point where we cannot afford to put off the issue by saying that the repercussions would only be felt by several generations after us, in order to justify leading the dangerous exploitative lifestyles that we have right now. Like you said, Earth may be the only planet where we can survive and we HAVE to be accountable for moving towards a sustainable living situation for the entire population.

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  3. Along the lines of the question raised in class regarding carbon credits, I was wondering what you guys think about the scenario (mentioned by Dr. Pattanayak) where carbon credits are used as coupons to upgrade cookstoves in poor households in developing countries? Should there be a direct link between a country's actual emissions and the burden of responsibility of reducing those emissions which is not transferable? Or is the system of selling carbon credits bringing in the necessary funds for developing countries? An interesting read about how countries are exploiting this system, without considering the long term damage to the planet: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34042115
    What I am really trying to ask is that if in this situation, the overall end goal is more important than the means of achieving it?

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  4. Thank you for your blog post. I agree there is a great need of research on plenary health and believe it is starting to gain steam and people are starting to realize the importance of the links between human, environmental and animal health. I think One Health is a field within plenary health in which a lot of people have started responding to and I believe research in this field will continue to grow in the future as people begin to realize the importance of studying the complex ecological interactions and their implications on health. One notable point in which you discuss in your post is the implication of biodiversity loss on human health. Coming from a wildlife biology background, I think research on the human-wildlife interface as well as the implications of biodiversity loss on human health are greatly under researched and should be an area in which there is more focus in the future. With the continued loss of protected areas which in turn leads to more interaction with wildlife this will become an ever growing problem for society unless soon addressed.

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  5. Thanks for the insightful post, Loise and Sumedha! The issue of trying to improve and preserve planetary health is such a complex and multi-faceted one. The controlled burning of forests does lead to an increase in environmental carbon dioxide, but it also promotes the natural life stages of the forest through its burning and rebirth. Controlled burning also can protect the homes and lives of those living near areas that are prone to flash fires; when wildfire fighters strategically burn sections of the forest, it reduces the areas to which the fire can spread.
    So ultimately, when we have the controversy of protecting human health or planetary health, what do we choose? It's an extremely difficult debate, particularly when the lives of humans and wildlife are at stake. You have so many different entities and stakeholders fighting for what they want and what they believe in their hearts to be right.

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