Proponents of the concept of planetary health constitute one branch of a wider movement which seeks to reorganize, and perhaps revolutionize, public health in response to global environmental problems, especially climate change. Ethics is at the center of this push for transformation. In collaboration with the Joint Centre for Bioethics, this seminar will explore the concept of planetary health, interrogate its central values, identify key tensions, and articulate an agenda for future research. It will propose (first) that the planetary health movement should embrace a wide, normative vision of planetary health as opposed to a narrower, more technocratic one, and (second) that it should reorient itself so as to make its overarching normative concept “planetary flourishing”, while regarding “planetary health” as an essential, but subsidiary component.
Speaker:
Stephen M. Gardiner, Professor of Philosophy and Ben Rabinowitz Endowed, Professor of the Human Dimensions of the Environment, Director of the Program on Ethics, University of Washington, Seattle