Ethical Issues in Climate Change and Health: How Can Environmental Health Research Facilitate Transformative Changes?

摘要

Our world is facing ecological and biological system changes of unpreceded speed, magnitude and extent. Climate change and biodiversity loss, together with other planetary changes, threaten human societies, and illustrate key frailties of our current approach through the applied sciences. First, its incapacity to trigger rapid actions based on scientific knowledge. It took three decades of scientific dissemination to obtain the political consensus of the Paris agreement. Yet, while numerous studies prove that human health is directly relevant to four key aspects of current climate negotiations (mitigation, adaptation, financing, and capacity development) it is seldom discussed as such. Second is the difficulty of thinking in terms of non-linear responses and tipping points. Indeed, the 2°C target of the Paris agreement does not guarantee that some tipping points will not be exceeded. Third is recognition of the impossibility, with current science, to capture the totality of the health impacts of planetary issues. "There is no planet B" emphasizes that there is no control population for research purposes. This problem is solved by considering the puzzle, piece by piece, but few studies explicitly recognize the limitations of this fragmented approach. Facing these frailties, and in the context of limited resources and time, we need to find new ways of thinking. Some researchers claim that critical research questions are no longer about the problems, but about how to facilitate the transformation of society to solve them, considering that we now are in a post-cautionary world. Perspectives include new forms of interdisciplinary collaborations, emphasis on practical knowledge, experiments, and the recognition of values. How can environmental health researchers introduce these perspectives into their work, and contribute to the shaping of new sustainable societies?