New institutions are being set up, and high-level discussions are taking place to prepare for the next pandemic. But to safeguard human health, over 250 organizations from 47 countries underscored the need for efforts to also protect the health of the environment.
On Tuesday, the organizations published the São Paulo Declaration in The Lancet, calling for a “fundamental shift” in how people live and identifying key actions for different sectors, including those working in health, agriculture, international organizations, funders including financial institutions, and the private sector.
“Only by thinking of the entire picture of planetary health will we be able to safeguard human health and all life on Earth.”
— Jeremy Pivor, senior program coordinator, Planetary Health AllianceThe declaration calls on the health sector to “reorient all aspects of health systems toward planetary health — from procurement, energy sources, health care efficiency, to waste reduction” and commit to “achieving a Nature-positive, carbon-neutral health care system before 2040.”
Financing institutions meanwhile should not invest in projects and enterprises that “profit from degrading Nature and thus harming humankind.”
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The declaration also calls on funders to allocate “long-term and stable funding for generating new planetary health knowledge and the translation of that knowledge into practice.”
In addition, international organizations need to overcome silos and recognize the linkages between having healthy people and a healthy planet.
“The field of Planetary Health, and the São Paulo Declaration, looks at the whole picture of how disruptions to natural systems threaten to set back all the progress we have made in global health over the past century including, but not limited to, climate change, biodiversity loss, land use change, resource scarcity, and destruction of the quality of air, water, and soil,” said Jeremy Pivor, senior program coordinator for the Planetary Health Alliance, a global consortium hosted within the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
These disruptions not just expose humans to more infectious diseases, but also affect their nutrition, mental health and lead to more noncommunicable diseases, he said.
“Only by thinking of the entire picture of planetary health will we be able to safeguard human health and all life on Earth,” he added.
In August, a Harvard-led international scientific task force also published a report that recommended investments in forest conservation and biosecurity around animal farms to prevent another virus spillover from animals to humans, emphasizing the need to prevent pandemics, and not just to prepare for them.
Through the declaration, Pivor said the Planetary Health Alliance hopes to support signatories in their work by getting planetary health concepts and frameworks recognized in international discussions, including at the G-20, U.N. Biodiversity Conference, or COP 15, and the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 26, taking place this October, and the Stockholm+50 high-level event in 2022.
Signatories to the declaration do not include big institutions such as the World Health Organization, World Bank, and major philanthropic organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But Pivor said as planetary health and the São Paulo Declaration gain traction, they expect to be able to engage these organizations and others “critical to health.”
Update, Oct. 6, 2021: This article has been updated to clarify that The Lancet published the São Paulo Declaration on Tuesday.
About the author
Jenny Lei Ravelo@JennyLeiRavelo
Jenny Lei Ravelo is a Devex Senior Reporter based in Manila. She covers global health, with a particular focus on the World Health Organization, and other development and humanitarian aid trends in Asia Pacific. Prior to Devex, she wrote for ABS-CBN, one of the largest broadcasting networks in the Philippines, and was a copy editor for various international scientific journals. She received her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas.
