Abstract
Ecology is both blessed and burdened by romanticism, with a legacy that is multi-edged for health. The prefix ‘eco-’ can carry a cultural and political (subversive) baggage, associated with motivating environmental activism. Ecology is also practiced as a technical ‘science’, with quantitative and deterministic leanings and a biophysical emphasis. A challenge for planetary health is to avoid lapsing into, or rejecting, either position. A related opportunity is to adopt ecological thought that offers a rich entrance to understanding living systems: a relationality of connectedness, interdependence, and reciprocity to understand health in a complex and uncertain world. Planetary health offers a global scale framing; we regard its potential as equivalent to the degree to which it can embrace, at its core, ecological thought, and develop its own political narrative.
RAS ID
29907
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-1-2019
School
Centre for Ecosystem Management / School of Science
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Publisher
MDPI
Recommended Citation
Horwitz, P., & Parkes, M. W. (2019). Intertwined strands for ecology in planetary health. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/challe10010020
Comments
Horwitz, P., & Parkes, M. W. (2019). Intertwined strands for ecology in planetary health. Challenges, 10(1), Article 20. https://doi.org/10.3390/challe10010020