TY - JOUR
T1 - Human population health
T2 - sentinel criterion of environmental sustainability
AU - McMichael, AJ J.
PY - 2009/10
Y1 - 2009/10
N2 - Our personal day-to-day experience of health ailments, reinforced by much recent behaviour-oriented 'health promotion' rhetoric, easily misconstrues 'health' as a local and individual-level issue. We thus fail to recognize that, over time, the health profile of a population is the real 'bottom line' indicator of the prevailing environmental and social conditions: food yields, freshwater supplies, climatic stability, natural constraints on infectious agents, social relations, and the within-population distribution of access to these environmental assets. For Homo sapiens, 'environmental sustainability' must therefore be, ultimately, about sustaining health-supporting environmental conditions. (We may worry about the biosphere 'out there', but Earth will, as ever, re-equilibrate.) Recognition of this dependence of human population health on natural environmental function will add significant additional motivation to manage Earth's environment and climate sustainably.
AB - Our personal day-to-day experience of health ailments, reinforced by much recent behaviour-oriented 'health promotion' rhetoric, easily misconstrues 'health' as a local and individual-level issue. We thus fail to recognize that, over time, the health profile of a population is the real 'bottom line' indicator of the prevailing environmental and social conditions: food yields, freshwater supplies, climatic stability, natural constraints on infectious agents, social relations, and the within-population distribution of access to these environmental assets. For Homo sapiens, 'environmental sustainability' must therefore be, ultimately, about sustaining health-supporting environmental conditions. (We may worry about the biosphere 'out there', but Earth will, as ever, re-equilibrate.) Recognition of this dependence of human population health on natural environmental function will add significant additional motivation to manage Earth's environment and climate sustainably.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=70449339739&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cosust.2009.07.001
DO - 10.1016/j.cosust.2009.07.001
M3 - Review article
SN - 1877-3435
VL - 1
SP - 101
EP - 106
JO - Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
JF - Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
IS - 1
ER -