Received: 24 October 2023 | Accepted: 24 October 2023 DOI: 10.1111/eve.13912
EDI TOR I A L
Time to treat the climate and nature crisis as one indivisible global health emergency
Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders and health professionals to recognise that climate change and biodi- versity loss are one indivisible crisis and must be tackled together to preserve health and avoid catastrophe. This overall environmental crisis is now so severe as to be a global health emergency. The world is currently responding to the climate crisis and the
nature crisis as if they were separate challenges. This is a danger- ous mistake. The 28th Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change is about to be held in Dubai while the 16th COP on biodi- versity is due to be held in Turkey in 2024. The research communi- ties that provide the evidence for the two COPs are unfortunately largely separate, but they were brought together for a workshop in 2020 when they concluded that: ‘Only by considering climate and biodiversity as parts of the same complex problem…can solutions be developed that avoid maladaptation and maximize the beneficial outcomes’ (Otto-Portner et al., 2021 ). As the health world has recognised with the development of the
concept of planetary health, the natural world is made up of one overall interdependent system. Damage to one subsystem can cre- ate feedbacks that damage another—for example, drought, wildfires, floods and the other effects of rising global temperatures destroy plant life, and lead to soil erosion and so inhibit carbon storage, which means more global warming (Ripple et al., 2023 ). Climate change is set to overtake deforestation and other land-use change as the primary driver of nature loss (European Academies Science Advisory Council, 2021 ). Nature has a remarkable power to restore. For example, de-
forested land can revert to forest through natural regeneration, and marine phytoplankton, which act as natural carbon stores, turn over 1 billion tonnes of photosynthesising biomass every 8 days. Indigenous land and sea management has a particularly im- portant role to play in regeneration and continuing care (Dawson et al., 2021 ). Restoring one subsystem can help another—for example, replen-
ishing soil could help remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere on a vast scale (Bossio et al., 2020 ). But actions that may benefit one subsystem can harm another—for example, planting forests with one
type of tree can remove carbon dioxide from the air but can damage the biodiversity that is fundamental to healthy ecosystems (Levia et al., 2020 ).
THE IMPACTS ON HEALTH
Human health is damaged directly by both the climate crisis, as the journals have described in previous editorials (Atwoli et al., 2021 , 2022 ), and by the nature crisis (WHO and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2015 ). This indivisible planetary crisis will have major effects on health as a result of the disruption of social and economic systems—shortages of land, shelter, food and water, exacerbating poverty, which in turn will lead to mass migra- tion and conflict. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, air pollution and the spread of infectious diseases are some of the major health threats exacerbated by climate change (Magnano San Lio et al., 2023 ). ‘Without nature, we have nothing’, was UN Secretary- General António Guterres ' s blunt summary at the biodiversity COP in Montreal last year (Jelskov, 2022 ). Even if we could keep global warming below an increase of 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, we could still cause catastrophic harm to health by destroying nature. Access to clean water is fundamental to human health, and yet
pollution has damaged water quality, causing a rise in water-borne diseases (WHO, 2022 ). Contamination of water on land can also have far- reaching effects on distant ecosystems when that water runs off into the ocean (Comeros-Raynal et al., 2021 ). Good nutrition is underpinned by diversity in the variety of foods, but there has been a striking loss of genetic diversity in the food system. Globally, about a fifth of people rely on wild species for food and their liveli- hoods (Simkin et al., 2022 ). Declines in wildlife are a major challenge for these populations, particularly in low- and middle-income coun- tries. Fish provide more than half of dietary protein in many African, South Asian and small island nations, but ocean acidification has re- duced the quality and quantity of seafood (Birchenough et al., 2017 ). Changes in land use have forced tens of thousands of species into closer contact, increasing the exchange of pathogens and the
This comment is being published simultaneously in multiple journals. For the full list of journals, see: https:// www. bmj. com/ conte nt/ full- list- autho rs- and- signa torie s- clima te- natur e- emerg ency- edito rial- octob er- 2023 .
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2023 The Authors. Equine Veterinary Education published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of EVJ Ltd.
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