Samuel Myers - Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves

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Copyright 2020 Samuel Myers and Howard Frumkin

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M St., NW, Suite 650 Washington, DC 20036.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-966-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019955657

All Island Press books are printed on environmentally responsible materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Keywords: biodiversity loss, climate change, climate migration, EcoHealth, ecological economics, energy and health, environmental change, environmental health, food and nutrition, global health, infectious disease, mental health, noncommunicable diseases, One Health, planetary boundaries, pollution, regenerative agriculture, sustainability, toxic exposures, well-being

For our children

Sophie and Lucy, Gabe and Amara

With boundless love and hope

Visit www.islandpress.org/planetary-health to download the free anthology of case studies.

Sometime toward the end of 2019, after this book was already in final copy-editing, lifes smallest entity, a virusSARS-CoV-2mutated and brought the world to its knees. The mutations allowed this RNA virus to move from its primary hostmost likely a batinto human populations and from there rapidly cause a devastating loss of lives and livelihoods that is still unfolding at the time of this writing. While this book was written prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the themes it explores have never been more relevant. As it happens, Covid-19 is a prototypical planetary health story: the viruss origin is related to our interactions with nature and wildlife, our food system, and changes in demography and technology; lessons we are learning about controlling the pandemic underscore the importance of systems thinking, the need for collective action, and the promise of rapid global behavior change; and this global pause presents an unprecedented opportunity to chart a new course.

At the end of this book, we have written an epilogue exploring the Covid-19 pandemic as a planetary health problem and emphasizing the extent to which it illustrates many of the themes that run through this book. If you are impatient to put todays events into the context of planetary health, we invite you to skip to the end, read the epilogue, and then come back to the beginning. Otherwise, the epilogue is best read last, as a summary of many of this books themes and an opportunity to make sense of the extraordinary moment we find ourselves in. Either way, we wish you good health and solace in these times of upheaval.

Samuel Myers and Howard Frumkin

Many book acknowledgments begin with thanks to professional colleagues and end with the authors or editors spouses. We are reversing that custom. Kelsey (Sam) and Joanne (Howie) come first. We appreciate, more than we can say, their support for each of us as we worked on this book, from our first long meeting in Crested Butte (on time pilfered from a joint family holiday) to the many evenings and weekends since then. Even more than that, we appreciate their companionship and love on our life journeys. Kelsey is a climate activist, Joanne a global health journalistand both are values-driven, dedicated, highly effective, compassionate women. We are both very lucky men, and we know it.

We both trained in medicine and public health, but our intellectual journeys have taken us far afield from therefrom ecology to agronomy, from urban and transportation planning to earth science. No one makes such journeys alone. Innumerable friends and colleagues have taught us and guided us along the way, helping us to avoid (all but a few!) embarrassing errors as weve striven to knit together insights from diverse fields while avoiding being dilettantes. We cannot name you all here, but you know who you are. Any residual errors are, of course, solely our responsibility.

We thank the extended Planetary Health family, a vibrant and fast-growing network in every corner of the globe. Coming from diverse backgrounds, disciplines, and institutional settings, we are united by a commitment to protecting people and protecting our planet. At meetings of the Planetary Health Alliance, in private conversations, while reading your papers, you have contributed enormously to our understanding of the issues addressed in this book.

We thank the chapter authors in this book. We were heavy-handed editors, in an effort to achieve a consistent vision and voice throughout; without exception, the authors accepted our editorial bombing runs with grace and good cheer. They put enormous time and effort into their chapters, we are truly proud of what they produced, and we are deeply grateful to them all.

We thank the team in Boston that helped in so many ways to bring this book to fruition. Emma Pollack, a graduate student in sustainability, health, and the global environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, took the initiative to approach us about working on the book, and work she diddoing anything that needed doing, from proofreading to formatting to checking references to managing illustrations. The team at the Planetary Health AllianceAmalia Almada, Perri Sheinbaum, Erika Veidis, and Max Zimbergprovided invaluable direct and indirect support as well.