Planetary Well-being Research Articles

Twenty-first century capitalism & commercial determinants of health: what are the connections?

Abstract 21st century capitalism (e.g., globalization, financialization, deregulation, privatization, corporate control and deployment of new technologies, etc.) influences people's daily efforts to get food, health care, education, work, transportation and connections to others and thus challenges the search for well being and a decent life. This presentation will provide a systematic and explicit examination of capitalism and its impact on human and planetary well-being. In so doing it will provide a broader perspective that builds on the more focused commercial determinants of health.

29.B. Workshop: Moving upstream to advance understanding of & ways to address the commercial determinants of health

Abstract Poor health is increasingly determined not only by the products but by the behaviours of major corporations, notably but not exclusively, unhealthy commodity industries. Models of the determinants of health have been successfully used to advance understanding of the broad range of factors that affect health, and guide policy-makers to entry points for public health interventions. However, the existing and widely used models of social determinants insufficiently address the pervasive influence of commercial actors, such as transnational corporations, within their conceptual frameworks. While conceptual models of the commercial determinants of health and taxonomies of unhealthy commodity industry political activity have been proposed and now applied to diverse industries, there remains a need for such work to fully reflect the extent of private sector political activity. In particular, such models must recognise the corporate sector's upstream influence in shaping, for example, the overarching political environment, trade and governance structures which have both facilitated the spread of NCDs and hindered policy progress in addressing them. Going further still there is a need to recognise that these corporate practices are both enabled by and drive the modern capitalist system which in turn poses threats to human and planetary wellbeing. It is increasingly important, and indeed urgent, for public health professionals to recognise and address these issues. This workshop therefore aims to: identify limitations in existing models of the determinants of health;present new models and taxonomies which can be used to better understand and address the commercial determinants of health;present evidence on the behaviour and practices of unhealthy commodity industries that inform these latest models and taxonomies, pulling together the “silos” of evidence across, for example, tobacco, food and alcohol;examine the corporate sector's, often neglected, upstream influences over policy infrastructure, trade and governance;thereby advance understanding of how unhealthy commodity industries drive ill health and the range and nature of interventions required to address such behaviours and practices;explore how we go further still in understanding and addressing the health challenges posed by the modern capitalist system. The workshop brings together leading scholars in the field and will involve 4 overview presentations followed by detailed discussion where audience participation will be actively invited. Key messages Health is increasingly determined by the products, behaviours and practices of major corporations. We urgently need to understand and address these if we are to improve health and reduce inequalities. This workshop will propose new models for understanding how corporations influence health, focusing particularly on upstream influences on politics, trade & governance & how these can be addressed.

Riskscapes and the socio-spatial challenges of climate change

Anthropogenic climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of the physical threats to human and planetary wellbeing. However, climate change risks, and their interaction with other “riskscapes”, remain understudied. Riskscapes encompass different viewpoints on the threat of loss across space, time, individuals and collectives. This Special Issue of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society enhances our understanding of the multifaceted and interlocking dimensions of climate change and riskscapes. It brings together rigorous and critical international scholarship across diverse realms on inquiry under two, interlinked, themes: (i) governance and institutional responses and (ii) vulnerabilities and inequalities. The contributors offer a forceful reminder that when considering climate change, social justice principles cannot be appended after the fact. Climate change adaptation and mitigation pose complex and interdependent social and ethical dilemmas that will need to be explicitly confronted in any activation of “Green New Deal” strategies currently being developed internationally. Such critical insights about the layered, unequal and institutional dimensions of risks are of paramount import when considering other riskscapes pertaining to conflict and war, displaced people and pandemics like the 2019–2020 global COVID-19 pandemic.

Seeing ‘Indra’s Net of Jewels’: Expanding systems thinking in clinical training to incorporate planetary wellbeing

This article aims to illuminate the fundamental inter-relationship between wellbeing of person and wellbeing of planet. It goes on to examine why and how the systems ‘lens’ in clinical psychology training could be meaningfully expanded to include a planetary health layer.

Thinking Transformational System Change

ABSTRACT The dire condition of planetary systems, growing inequality, and other grand challenges seem to make system transformation, either purposeful or not, inevitable. This paper argues transformation agents using approaches that involve seeing the system and its patterns, sensemaking that constructs new narratives and stories about the system built on resonant memes, and connecting across a range of boundaries are necessary for purposeful transformation towards human and planetary wellbeing. The paper further argues that it is such purposeful transformation towards global goals around wellbeing for all (including non-humans) that is needed. MAD statement The world is in significant trouble in its future capacity to support human civilization as we know it. There is growing recognition that major and purposeful systemic transformation of human systems, e.g. economic, social, and human-nature interact, is needed. Transformation change agents can purposefully work toward system transformations using approaches of seeing and making sense of the current system to figure out where leverage points for change are, creating new stories and memes that resonate broadly through sensemaking processes, and connect actors already working toward similar ends.

Unpacking the Urban Infrastructure Nexus with Environment, Health, Livability, Well-Being, and Equity

Multi-objective sustainability planning in cities must address seven physical provisioning systems that are key to advancing local and planetary well-being. Recent progress in environmental and health footprinting, combined with new frontiers in unpacking infrastructure-well-being relationships, will advance urban nexus science to provide customizable information toward inclusive well-being on a finite planet, one city at a time, across the globe.

Reflections on women’s career responsibilities in neoliberally driven universities

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reflect on career aspirations and experiences explored with senior women organizational scholars employed in neoliberally driven public universities in Aotearoa (New Zealand) legally mandated to serve as a critic and conscience of society.Design/methodology/approachOver the 18 months period, three sequential research conversations were conducted with each of 12 participants known for their commitment to social justice and planetary well-being. The conversational approach allowed for spontaneous participant-lead development of ideas. Sequencing of conversations allowed for reflection on matters raised in previous conversations.FindingsVitality and creativity deemed essential to scholarly careers were reportedly under pressure. Career concepts in use indicate a protean commitment to self-direction but also recognized constraints of institutionally driven neoliberal output regimes. Detrimental impacts of neoliberal values permeating their employing institutions were offered spontaneously often in radical feminist terms but paradoxically given liberal feminist remedies.Research limitations/implicationsThe 12 diverse transcripts of participant conversations generated remarkable similarities that indicate the influence of career articulations on the social construction of reality. The implications of this interpretation invite further reflection on the consequences of normalization of career metaphors and their implication in the intensification of institutional control, the weakening of professional autonomy and the system preserving restriction of career-related responsibilities.Practical implicationsHighlighting constraints to creativity and vitality necessary for scholarly work can inform further research into professional influences on justice and environmental matters in and beyond the Academy.Social implicationsIn this paper a short review of Aotearoa (New Zealand) as in vanguard of neoliberal intensification globally, the implication of this doctrine in neoliberally driven universities and the impacts on career opportunities, degradations and responsibilities of scholars are explored.Originality/valueThe conversational research process contrasts with more tightly framed empirical research methods by generating spontaneous participant-led articulations of career-related dynamics explored and expanded over subsequent conversations.

New partnerships, new perspectives: The relevance of sexual and reproductive health and rights for sustainable development

In the light of the opportunities presented by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) debate is being reignited to understand the connections between human population dynamics (including rapid population growth) and sustainable development. Sustainable development is seriously affected by human population dynamics yet programme planners too often fail to consider them in development programming, casting doubt on the sustainability of such programming. Some innovative initiatives are attempting to cross sector boundaries once again, such as the Population Health and Environment (PHE) programmes, which are integrated programmes encompassing family planning service provision with broader public health services and environmental conservation activities. These initiatives take on greater prominence in the context of the SDGs since they explicitly seek to provide cross-sector programming and governance to improve both human and planetary wellbeing. Yet such initiatives remain under-researched and under promoted.

Time and the Environment: “Slow Violence” in Benito Pérez Galdós’s Doña Perfecta and Marianela

Time and the Environment: “Slow Violence” in Benito Pérez Galdós’s Doña Perfecta and Marianela Sarah Sierra In “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” Foucault writes that the great obsession of the nineteenth century was history, or time. Evidence of this obsession abounds in Western literary representations that portray human behavior adjusting to both its historical consciousness as well as the daily measured and rhythmic time of the clock indicative of industrial societies. In spite of this fascination with mechanized rhythms, the nineteenth century marks the beginning phases of a perceptual crisis regarding other temporal horizons, a crisis that has only become more acute during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. One of the great conflicts confronting humanity--and indeed the entire planetary well-being--is the abstraction of human temporality from Earth’s rhythms. As Richard Irvine explains, in contemporary Western-minded societies the changes brought about by industrialization had profound effects on time-reckoning. This term, as Nancy Munn explains, identifies prevailing methods within a society used for temporal orientation: “Strictly construed, ‘time-reckoning’ refers to the use of selected cultural categories, or contingent events […] to “tell time”- to ask “when” something happened, will or should happen- and to “measure” duration- to ask “how long” something takes, or to “time” it (8). Measuring time forms an integral part of society that extends from larger socio-cultural structures to individual perceptions of time. Filip Vostal writes that “not only does transformation of the temporal structures of modern society reconfigure our relationship with each other and with ourselves, but it also affects how we relate to the physical and natural world” (236). Changes in time-reckoning occur in slight ways that can adjust how one organizes and segments activities in daily life; however, industrialization contributed to an extensive time revolution that profoundly altered human thought. While initially localized to industrialized nations in the late-eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, globalization has implemented these temporal changes imposing what Halmut Rosa calls social acceleration. It transforms human perception of time and profoundly affects, as Vostal notes, how we relate to the external world. Contemporary technological societies have been experiencing an unprecedented acceleration of time that has had direct consequences on how these same ‘advanced’ [End Page 41] cultures perceive the extremely slow rhythms of nature. In fact, many theorists now identify that modern technology imposes a perceptual blindness to causal processes in the natural world.1 This blindness is particularly alarming as it hinders the ability to see the effects of human activity on the biosphere. In Rob Nixon’s provocative study Slow Violence, he sustains that in the modern technological age, human cognitive processes increasingly struggle to recognize a connection when prolonged periods separate an event from consequences. As social acceleration increases, perceptual blindness of slow causal events portends frightening consequences for the global ecosystem. In spite of growing alarm over the destabilized biosphere, detractors of climate change accuse scientists and cultural critics of politicizing the environment. The dismissal of an environmental crisis is often traced back to the increasing disconnect between the human and non-human worlds. In essence, modern societies rooted in an ideology of progress engender convictions of humanity’s domination of the natural world, which perforce ignores that humans are deeply reliant on natural affordances. In a counter effort to redress the increasing disengagement of human beings from the environment, literary and artistic expressions have sought to draw attention to the human factor in the environmental crisis such as Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring. Contemporary efforts in literary and cultural productions attempt to redirect attention to humanity’s integral role in the condition of the biosphere as Nixon has shown in his analyses of ecocritical texts. Earlier works, however, offer insight into the social conditions that altered humanity’s understanding of the Earth and its processes. As modernization and technology reconfigured human experiences of time with an ever-accelerating tempo, the Earth’s slower rhythms fell beyond the scope of cognitive processes. This essay seeks to explore earlier representations of the time revolution and social acceleration that altered perception of the environment in two of Galdós’s novels, Doña...

Changing perspectives on natural resource heritage, human rights, and intergenerational justice

ABSTRACTThis paper observes how the social, political and legal life of rights continues to evolve in response to growing natural resource scarcity and deteriorating climate conditions worldwide. In particular, it assesses the type of interpretive repertoires actors bring to bear on issues of justice between generations and human rights eligibility, documenting arguments put forward in defense, as well as against assigning a rights status to those not yet born. It notes how scientific research documenting the ‘forcing effects’ of escalating atmospheric pollution on long-term planetary wellbeing triggers a new conversation on the limits of traditional approaches to environmental justice and highlights the need to consider once again how a more long-term perspectivism on duties, rights and responsibilities can be institutionally applied.

The case for a paradigm shift: from global to planetary nursing.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a paradigm shift from "global nursing" toward "planetary nursing" to more effectively engage worldwide health initiatives, such as the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Such a shift expands the understanding of "health" from a phenomenon focused solely on humanity toward one of interdependent animal, environment, and overall planetary well-being, recalibrating the future roles and responsibilities of nursing accordingly. While there is limited data that discusses nursing-focused contributions to planetary health, the advancement of planetary nursing has been the focus of scholarly dialogue. Knowledge regarding the planet's systems, species, ecosystems, and myriad environmental dimensions must be integrated throughout nursing education to be translated to practice and social justice initiatives. As the profession deepens collaborations with international policymakers, nurses will become integral to advancing planetary health through social justice and health equity efforts. Nursing research must evolve to contribute to the goal of planetary health for the next generation and beyond. Ultimately, these authors call for a shift toward One Mind-One Health-One Planet to move the disciplinary stance from one of "global nursing" to a more expansive view of "planetary nursing" in alignment with initiatives to promote and sustain planetary health.

Transformative Sustainability Education and Empowerment Practice on Indigenous Lands

Set against a context of Indigenous health disparities, climate turmoil, and unpredictability of human-ecological systems, this article asks the question of how transformative sustainability education (TSE) with its increasing emphasis on Indigenous knowledge and ways of being can be effectively and ethically applied in colonized modern nation-states? In doing so, it makes the necessary links between the interconnected goals of addressing underlying determinants of Indigenous health and supporting the resurgence of Indigenous knowledges and ways of being toward ensuring planetary well-being more generally. As a means of negotiating this critical interface, three pedagogical capabilities of TSE (Scaling DEEP, Scaling OUT, and Scaling UP) are briefly outlined. Having laid this theoretical groundwork, this article (Part 1) focuses primarily on the role of the transformative sustainability educator in Scaling DEEP (effecting cultural and relational transformation from a de-colonial perspective) as a necessary precursor to the interrelated domains of Scaling OUT and UP (programming and policy change).

Sustainable development and human development. Evolution or transition in the scientific conception of sustainability?

The integration of the various ideological views by the academic community around the great problems facing the planet has allowed the establishment of a complex system of practical and theoretical relationships between man and nature, generating a strong connection between sustainable development and human development, and conferring greater prominence to the role of human beings, according to their powers, liberties and actions for achieving and maximizing their individual and collective well-being. In this regard, this chapter aims to analyze the influence of the human context in the historical conceptualization of development and its relation with human and planetary well-being over the past 50 years. We try to prove that when it comes to development from the human perspective or from the perspective of sustainability, it tends towards the same discourse that enables convergence and evolution of the concept of development into a much less utopian trend, with greater scope and application under the scientific paradigm of sustainability in terms of human welfare.

Offline: What should be the UK's “bold new role”?

Theresa May, Britain's Prime Minister, ended 2016 by challenging her country to “seize an historic opportunity to forge a bold new role for ourselves in the world.” Since Britain is soon to trigger its departure from one of the largest and most powerful associations of nations, we would be wise to take her invitation seriously. It's time to put the gloom that many have felt about Brexit behind us. What, therefore, should be the UK's “bold new role”? Britain is already a supremely global nation. The UK is the fifth largest economy in the world (after the USA, China, Japan, and Germany). Our most important export/import partners include countries outside the European Union, including the USA and China. Britain's global political responsibilities are second only to the USA, being a member of the permanent five of the UN Security Council and an influential voice in the G7, G20, IMF, World Bank, NATO, and OECD. It's hard to imagine a country being more global than the UK already is. But being more global is our Prime Minister's call. Unfortunately, post-Brexit, the world's perception is that we are precisely the contrary. We are seen as a nation that is looking forward to a period of splendid isolation. As the New York Times recently noted, “Britain…has turned in on itself.” So what should we do? First, we should pause to diagnose our predicament. The USA is about to pursue an “America First” strategy. Europe is shrinking, quite literally—the UK represents 13% of the EU's total population. Multilateralism is fracturing. Terrorism is endemic. And since the 2008 financial crisis, public faith in government has collapsed. Still, there are good reasons to be optimistic. The Sustainable Development Goals have refreshed our vision of what the world might be. The Paris climate agreement was an unexpected success. The sovereign obligations of nations to peoples (a responsibility to protect among them) is now widely accepted. The world's leaders have never had more reliable evidence on which to base their decisions. And the demand for that evidence has never been greater. Here is a paradox. While global ambitions have been moderated, so grounds for a more confident outlook have strengthened. Second, we should define the UK's strengths. The government's understandable focus is on the economy—trade, industry, and financial services. But these strengths are only part of the reason for Britain's positive global reputation. Leaving aside our writers, musicians, and artists, whose international cultural footprint should place them at the forefront of post-Brexit strategies, Britain excels in four specific areas: science (and the academic research enterprise more broadly), health (the idea of universal health coverage, embodied in a national health service), higher education (the UK has 12 universities ranked in the world's top 100, second only to the USA), and development cooperation. Finally, those concerned about the UK's future should offer a clear prescription about what a new global role should be. Based on Britain's comparative advantages, it should be to enhance the lives and opportunities (including the economic opportunities) for people domestically and worldwide, with the understanding that these two geographic spheres of home and abroad are overlapping and inseparable. This objective is not altruistic. The more secure the lives of others, the more secure the lives of those living at home. Human security breeds human security. The UK should seek to increase its influence internationally with this goal clearly stated. It is likely that the realpolitik of Theresa's May's government will be to focus on hard power—Britain's ability to get what it wants by payment, threat, or coercion (exemplified today by dismal rhetoric regarding the country's terms of exit from the EU). But the UK's great strength lies in its soft power. Britain's aim must be to expand the currency of soft power—its supply of global public goods, the discovery, development, and delivery of benefits, especially knowledge, that are available to everyone, and which can be denied to no one. National self-interest post-Brexit depends on strengthening the institutions of knowledge creation, application, and dissemination at home, and connecting those same institutions with countries and peoples overseas. For those working in the medical sciences, our task is to make a convincing case for the expansion of one particular area of soft power—which means universities, health care, and development assistance. If such a vision could be realised, Brexit might indeed be a catalyst for remarkable new British contributions to planetary wellbeing.

Ecosocial food policy: improving human, animal, and planetary well-being

(2016). Ecosocial food policy: improving human, animal, and planetary well-being. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 1-11.

The Power of Policy: Reinforcing the Paris Trajectory

AbstractThe Paris Agreement is a critical global response that enables a transition toward human and planetary wellbeing. It articulates a new trajectory toward a low‐carbon economic system. It encompasses all countries, in the global North and South, and engages public and private sectors at local and global levels. Every country has stepped up to contribute to addressing the challenge of climate change. Governments, civil society, businesses, investors, academics expressed commitment to tackling climate change not as an end in itself, but as a means to a resilient society, to sustainable development and to more fulfilling and enriching lifestyles and livelihoods.

From little acorns..: environmental action as a source of well-being for schoolchildren

Pastoral care in education may take many forms but increasing emphasis on education for sustainable development (ESD) and concern about children’s disconnection from nature suggests that our understanding of care should perhaps encompass the more than human world. The study described in this article examines longer term perspectives on well-being and looks at the possible benefits of environmental action for happiness and positive functioning. Considering the role of memory in the reconstruction of a past experience of tree planting, we suggest that well-being is constantly being reframed within the flux of life course and education. From survey responses and subsequent discussion groups in secondary schools exploring such memories, a deeper understanding of what well-being and connectedness to nature mean to young people within this case study is achieved. We note interdependencies between personal and planetary well-being within respondents’ reflections and consider whether experiences of environmental action and its positioning as an act of altruism for the greater good might provide a source of positive feelings for young people not only at the time, but through subsequent recollection.

Integration and Diffusion in Sustainable Development Goals: Learning from the Past, Looking into the Future

One of the next major challenges for research and policy on sustainability is setting the post-2015 Development Agenda. This challenge arises as a direct result of the formal ending of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015 and as an outcome of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). The post-2015 Development Agenda is expected to include two agendas: one on human well-being to advance the MDG targets and the other on planetary well-being, which requires a safe “operating space” within the Earth’s life-support system. In contrast to the MDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are meant to apply to both developing and developed countries and create a space for development within the stable functioning of the Earth’s systems. However, what might this all look like? For answers, this paper reviews the achievements and reflections of the MDGs to date and identifies new challenges entailed in the shift of development goals from “millennium” to “sustainable”. While most of the existing studies look at these two sets of issues separately, combining the two reveals two important features of the SDGs. First, SDGs need to integrate both human and planetary well-being in a goal, and second, goals, or sub-goals, need to be formulated at multiple levels, from global to local levels. While the MDGs represented no integrated goals, some of the existing proposals on SDGs include integrated goals. However, our analysis has shown that they do not present the vertical diffusion of goals. Considering both integration and diffusion in the architecture of SDGs is a remaining task.

Changing values and valuing change: Toward an ecospiritual perspective in social work

This article examines the relationship between spirituality and the environment and the changing values required as we move toward a new politics of social work where commitment to social and political involvement is integral to spirituality, most notably surrounding environmental change. The ecospiritual perspective recognizes human interests are inextricably bound with planetary well-being. It serves not only to broaden social work beyond a preoccupation with the social, but also to shift professional thinking away from the pre-eminence of individualism and dualism, and the unquestioned acceptance of progress and uncontrolled growth that make it difficult for social workers to fulfil their role as agents of social and environmental justice.

‘Wellbeing’: A collateral casualty of modernity?

In the now vast empirical and theoretical literature on wellbeing knowledge of the subject is provided mainly by psychology and economics, where understanding of the concept are framed in very different ways. We briefly rehearse these, before turning to some important critical points which can be made about this burgeoning research industry, including the tight connections between the meanings of the concept with the moral value systems of particular 'modern' societies. We then argue that both the 'science' of wellbeing and its critique are, despite their diversity, re-connected by and subsumed within the emerging environmental critique of modern consumer society. This places concerns for individual and social wellbeing within the broader context of global human problems and planetary wellbeing. A growing number of thinkers now suggest that Western society and culture are dominated by materialistic and individualistic values, made manifest at the political and social levels through the unending pursuit of economic growth, and at the individual level by the seemingly endless quest for consumer goods, regardless of global implications such as broader environmental harms. The escalating growth of such values is associated with a growing sense of individual alienation, social fragmentation and civic disengagement and with the decline of more spiritual, moral and ethical aspects of life. Taken together, these multiple discourses suggest that wellbeing can be understood as a collateral casualty of the economic, social and cultural changes associated with late modernity. However, increasing concerns for the environment have the potential to counter some of these trends, and in so doing could also contribute to our wellbeing as individuals and as social beings in a finite world.