You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Commentary
The changing climates of global health
  1. Thomas Cousins1,2,
  2. Michelle Pentecost3,4,
  3. Alexandra Alvergne5,6,
  4. Clare Chandler7,
  5. Simukai Chigudu8,
  6. Clare Herrick9,
  7. Ann Kelly3,
  8. Sabina Leonelli10,
  9. Javier Lezaun11,
  10. Jamie Lorimer12,
  11. David Reubi13,
  12. Sharifah Sekalala14
  1. 1Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
  2. 2Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa
  3. 3Global Health and Social Medicine, King's College London, London, UK
  4. 4SAMRC-Wits Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit, School of Clinical Medicine, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg-Braamfontein, South Africa
  5. 5Montpellier Institute of Evolutionary Sciences, University of Montpellier, Montpellier, Languedoc-Roussillon, France
  6. 6Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
  7. 7Department of Global Health and Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London, UK
  8. 8Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  9. 9Geography, King's College London School of Social Science and Public Policy, London, UK
  10. 10Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter College of Social Sciences and International Studies, Exeter, Devon, UK
  11. 11Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
  12. 12School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford Social Sciences Division, Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
  13. 13Global Health and Social Medicine, King's College London School of Social Science and Public Policy, London, UK
  14. 14School of Law, University of Warwick Faculty of Social Sciences, Coventry, West Midlands, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Thomas Cousins; thomas.cousins{at}anthro.ox.ac.uk

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005442

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Summary box

    • The historical trajectories of three crises have converged in the 2020s: the COVID-19 pandemic, rising inequality and the climate crisis.

    • Global health as an organising logic is being transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

    • We point to an emerging consensus that the triple threats of global heating, zoonoses and worsening, often racialised inequalities, will need to be met by models of cooperation, equitable partnership and accountability that do not sustain exploitative logic of economic growth.

    • Health governance is challenged to reconsider sustainability and justice in terms of how local and global, domestic and transnational, chronic and infectious, human and non-human are interdependent.

    • In this article, we discuss their intersection and suggest that a new set of organising ideals, institutions and norms will need to emerge from their conjunction if a just and liveable world is to remain a possibility for humans and their cohabitants.

    • Future health governance will need to integrate pandemic preparedness, racial justice, inequality and more-than-human life in a new architecture of global health.

    • Such an agenda might be premised on solidarities that reach across national, class, spatial and species divisions, acknowledge historical debts and affirm mutual interdependencies.

    Introduction

    The decisions we make now will determine the course of the next 30 years and beyond: Emissions must fall by half by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions no later than 2050 to reach the 1.5C goal…If we fail to meet these goals, the disruption to economies, societies and people caused by COVID-19 will pale in comparison to what the climate crisis holds in store. (António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General)1

    The historical trajectories of three crises have converged in the 2020s: the COVID-19 pandemic, rising inequality and the climate crisis. The political, social and institutional arrangements that have collectively constituted 'global health,' and the potential obstacles and possibilities of the COVID-19 …

    View Full Text