BOOKS
Sustainable Communities for a Healthy Planet
Sustainable Communities for a Healthy Planet considers what it takes to cultivate human and planetary health in a time of rapid ecological, economic, and social change.
Sustainable Communities for a Healthy Planet presents an unconventional collection of ideas, practices, and ways of living together with the potential to enable long-term human and planetary health. Grounded in first-hand accounts from researchers, health practitioners, and social innovators across diverse fields, Katharine Zywert’s book argues that the most promising approaches often depart substantially from the incentive structures, goals, and mindsets that define the status quo and do not necessarily align with mainstream sustainability discourses.
The book instead presents promising approaches that disrupt dominant ideas about mental health, ageing, and chronic illness; circumvent exploitative markets for medications, medical technologies, and professionalized care; attend not only to the health of individual human bodies, but to the health of internal ecologies, human populations, nonhuman species, and the planet as a whole; and embody alternative, more inclusive ways of practicing medicine within communities and ecosystems. The stories assembled in this book illustrate how human beings might live healthy lives, supported by health systems that are not dependent on perpetual economic growth.
Sustainable Communities for a Healthy Planet challenges conventional ways of thinking about the future of health systems and asks hard questions about what it takes to cultivate human and planetary health in a time of rapid ecological, economic, and social change.
“An incredibly interesting read in which Zywert describes the mechanisms of human and planetary health all the way from global economics to community initiatives and explains the important connections between the two. It is a book that should interest all, and – most importantly – is written from the perspective of hope. The detailed case studies should inspire many to make a meaningful change to planetary and human health.”
Pauline Scheelbeek
Associate Professor in the Centre on Climate Change & Planetary Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Health in the Anthropocene: Living Well on a Finite Planet
How will the ecological and economic crises of the 21st century transform health systems and human wellbeing?
Adding to a growing body of knowledge about how the social-ecological dynamics of the Anthropocene affect human health, this collection presents strategies that both address core challenges, including climate change, stagnating economic growth, and rising socio-political instability, and offers novel frameworks for living well on a finite planet.
Rather than directing readers to more sustainable ways to structure health systems, Health in the Anthropocenenavigates the transition toward social-ecological systems that can support long-term human and environmental health, which requires broad shifts in thought and action, not only in formal health-related fields, but in our economic models, agriculture and food systems, ontologies, and ethics.
Arguing that population health will largely be decided at the intersection of experimental social innovations and appropriate technologies, this volume calls readers to turn their attention toward social movements, practices, and ways of living that build resilience for an era of systemic change. Drawing on diverse disciplines and methodologies from fields including anthropology, ecological economics, sociology, and public health, Health in the Anthropocene maps out alternative pathways that have the potential to sustain human wellbeing and ecological integrity over the long term.
“Health in the Anthropocene is a very well-researched, well-written work of great insight, foresight and ambition in relation to the ecological threats we face, with diverse analytic and practical contributions from a range of respected scholars.”
Solomon Benatar
University of Cape Town and University of Toronto