Cosmopolitanism and environmental health

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The chapter argues why and how cosmopolitanism is today the fundamental normative concept to understand, strive for and deliberate fair and effective environmental health governance. The argument of the first part is why, in the interest of this aim, we need to initially focus on the character of complexity of our environmental health problems and on what it would imply to deal with them in a fair way. The conclusion proposes a specific ‘ethics of care’ vision on how to deal with environmental health problems, given that we are all ‘bound in complexity’ facing those problems. The second part reflects on cosmopolitanism as an ancient ethical concept and argues that, facing the complexity of current global challenges such as climate change, cosmopolitanism is not any longer a spiritual abstract idea but a fundamental normative vision on humanity and the world. Based on these introductory parts, the third and fourth parts propose a specific contemporary meaning of cosmopolitanism, its motivations and its character as a moral stance. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the meaning of ‘cosmopolitanism as ethical competence’ and how it is an essential requirement for sustainable and fair environmental health governance.