Climate change, global health and planetary health

This chapter explores the contested meanings of global health and its relationship to healthcare delivery in low-income settings, inequality of multiple kinds, colonialism and eco-climatic change. Planetary health is discussed, as is the re-invigorated movement to 'decolonize' global health. Adapted from the titular chapter in this book's frst edition (written by the late Professor Tony McMichael), the chapter argues that climate change and other forms of planetary overload are pushing 'life support mechanisms' towards a highly undesirable tipping point. The chapter suggests that neocolonialism underpins disparities in global health outcomes, provision and application, and the existence of an associated assumption that poor populations will bear the vast share of the burden of adverse planetary change. It fnds that the related assumption that climate change and other forms of planetary overload can thus continue indefnitely-at least from the perspective of the global North-is a profound error.