Planetary Health: Caring for living things to care for our health

Human health depends on the health of the planet: the health of natural systems—air, water, biodiversity, climate—is essential to our survival. However, pollution, the scarcity of arable land and freshwater, the erosion of biodiversity, climate change, and other threats are deteriorating these systems. An emerging discipline led by Harvard University, planetary health aims to understand how the acceleration of these structural degradations threatens our health, but also how to care for humans and the rest of the biosphere.
Planetary Health is an optimistic and accessible gateway to discovering this new concept, which is gaining momentum, particularly since the Covid-19 crisis. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the authors, who are renowned experts, analyze the many impacts of the Anthropocene on health, particularly in terms of food and nutrition, infections, non-communicable diseases, and mental health.
Faced with this observation, they advocate a new ethic, in which all human actions would align with the need to care for living things in order to combat environmental changes and their harmful effects. They detail strategies to implement in this regard: controlling exposure to toxic substances, investing in clean energy, improving urban design, etc.
Planetary Health is the ideal guide to understanding how the evolution of our environment affects our health, our survival and that of the planet.