Abstract
Resilience thinking and ecosystems approaches to health (EAH), or ecohealth, share roots in complexity science, although they have distinct foundations in ecology and population health, respectively. The current articulations of these two approaches are strongly converging, but each approach has its strengths. Resilience thinking has developed theoretical models to the study of social– ecological systems, whereas ecohealth has a vast repertoire of experience in dealing with complex health issues. With the two fields dovetailing, there is ripe opportunity to create a dialog centered on concepts that are more thoroughly developed in one field, which can then serve to advance the other. In this article, we first present an overview of the ecohealth and resilience thinking frameworks before opening a dialog centered on seven themes that have strong potential for cross-pollination between the two approaches: scale interactions, regime shifts, adaptive environmental management, social learning, participation, social and gender equity, and knowledge to action. We conclude with some future research suggestions for those interested in theoretical and practical applications at the intersection of environment and health. In particular, closer collaboration between these two fields can lead to addressing blind spots in the ecosystem services framework, complementary social-network analysis, the application of resilience heuristics to the understanding of health, and the development of a normative dimension in resilience thinking.
Highlights
Health and disease are increasingly understood as the product of interrelated ecological, cultural, social, and economic situations
We first present an overview of the ecohealth and resilience thinking frameworks before opening a dialog centered on seven themes that have strong potential for cross-pollination between the two approaches: scale interactions, regime shifts, adaptive environmental management, social learning, participation, social and gender equity, and knowledge to action
Briefly, our departure point in this paper was that human health is both a driver and a result of social, economic, and environmental circumstances, as defined in ecohealth
Summary
Health and disease are increasingly understood as the product of interrelated ecological, cultural, social, and economic situations. Ecosystems provide basic material needs, regulate the spread of disease (Patz et al 2004, Myers and Patz 2009) and can provide emotional fulfillment (Barton et al 2012) Often, these connections become more apparent when there are negative consequences for humans, some examples are how recent outbreaks of vampire bat rabies in Brazil and Peru were associated with land-use change caused by gold mining prospecting (Schneider et al 2009), or how unusual precipitation patterns in the United States have been linked to outbreaks of waterborne diseases (Curriero et al 2001).
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