The (re)production of health in climate change

Abstract

To date, health in the context of climate change has mainly been considered from a biomedical perspective, whose pathogenic focus on health risks has primarily promoted curative and/or behavioral problem-solving strategies. This article therefore examines health in climate change from a perspective of Urban Public Health and political science, which has received less attention so far. The aim is to address existing constructions of health in climate change and their implications for dealing with the climate crisis, in particular regarding the design of urban environments. In doing so, it adopts a regulation-theoretical approach that allows for a theoretically grounded analysis of health in climate change, taking the triangle of nature, society and the individual as the object of research and revealing the significance of existing constructions of health—understood as a social relation—and its (re)production in climate change. This theoretical approach is extended to aspects of different spatial forms and the productions of space in social relations. The theoretical foundation makes it possible to recognize that there are understandings of health in climate change discourse that largely exclude the causes of climate change and thus make its treatment selective. As a result, broad socio-ecological transformation processes are obstructed, while the structural causes of climate change are preserved and stabilized despite their crisis character. An understanding of health that also sees health as a resource in a salutogenic sense and that strengthens the promotion of health by means of structural changes is being pushed into background. Positioning climate change as a public health issue requires a shift from curative, individual and behavioral interventions toward a focus on structural health promotion, especially through the development of health-promoting, just and climate-friendly urban environments. It also means that health must once again become more of a political issue and that existing boundaries between the private and public spheres must be questioned.