Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
rary epidemiologists primarily focus on individual-level behaviours and cir-
cumstances as causes of disease, thereby overlooking the broader ecological
dimension which draws attention to the underlying social, cultural and
political determinants of the patterns of disease risk within and between
populations. Political science is preoccupied with issues of national security,
social stability, the balance of tensions between neighbouring countries in
relation to resource access and population movement, and some issues of
international ethics and moral responsibilities. However, it does not nor-
mally address questions about forms of social organisation appropriate to
the achievement of sustainability.
What, then, is widely missing from these various disciplinary perspec-
tives is recognition that human sustenance, environmental stability, and the
flow of materials and other 'services' from nature are the foundation of good
health, survival and social advance. Earth's ecosystems are the life-support
systems for all human societies and are the basis of our economic life. We
weaken or disrupt them at our long-term, if not immediate, peril.
Views of 'human health' vis-à-vis 'sustainability'
On the above argument, the improvement and maintenance of human pop-
ulation health should be a central criterion of 'sustainability' (McMichael
2002). Changes in population health outcomes over time, interpreted appro-
priately, will convey more useful and relevant information about the sustain-
ability of society's chosen path than can the conventional, but often seriously
misleading, indices of economic performance and wealth levels.
Genuine sustainability, which spans distant future generations, requires
that we achieve societies able to maintain both the natural resource base and
internal social cohesion. However, achieving those conditions will require
unprecedented enlightened stewardship of the biosphere. There is mounting
evidence that humankind, via its expansions in numbers and economic
intensity, is now overloading the biosphere (McMichael 2001b).
The world's climatologists have recently converged on the view that we
are now experiencing the effects of human-induced climate change
(IPCC
2001; see also Chapter 7, this volume). This is just one symptom of planetary
overload. The others include the damaging of stratospheric ozone (with
resultant increased ultraviolet radiation flux), the degradation of productive
land, the disturbance of some of the world's great elemental cycles (sulphur,
nitrogen, phosphorus), the depletion of freshwater supplies, the weakening
