Health and Sustainability: A Taxonomy of Relationships

摘要

A simple, general framework for understanding the relationship between ecosystem change and sustainability issues and their consequent health outcomes will advance understanding and simplify communication. The present work seeks to develop a taxonomy or typology for relationships between health and issues of sustainability, identifying fundamental principles for each type. These types should be understood as different ways of looking at problems, not mutually exclusive categories:-"Catastrophic failure", characterized by existential risk for viability on a large scale because of effects beyond capacity to adapt or mitigate, and therefore are characterized by an "all or nothing" tipping point. (Global climate change.) -"Pollution issues", characterized by exposure-response relationships for severity and frequency of response, follow principles of toxicology as applied to populations. (Such issues have been the core interest of ISEE and ISES from their beginnings.) -"Ecosystem change and stochastic disease risk" define a class of sustainability-health interactions in which ecosystems are destabilized and have indirect consequences mediated by biological mechanisms other than direct toxicity, expressed by increased frequency of disease. (Infectious disease risk and the conventional "public health triad".) -"Ecosystem change and mediated health risk", characterized by entropy and loss of access to resources or economic opportunity and mediated by social or economic mediation. (Health effects of unemployment after depletion of fishing stocks.) -"Degradation of environmental services" after cessation or diminution in natural functions of economic value that affect health. (Land use decisions that affect airsheds and water reuse.) "Urban ecosystem management problems", characterized by inadequacy of management of artificial ecological systems in human communities. (Wastewater disposal.).