Introduction to the second edition

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Welcome to the second edition. We share, with an increasing number of academics and activists, a concern that in the Anthropocene - the human-dominated era - civilisation and thus population health is on a perilous trajectory. Humans traverse a narrow track, whose route is shaped by the struggle to meet the needs and wants of over eight billion (and growing) people, and the natural laws and other limits of the biosphere. While our resources are augmented by daily sunlight they can easily be damaged, not only by time and geophysical forces (e.g. earthquakes) but also by conscious human decisions, such as missiles and machetes.

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The warmth from that sunlight, on which we all depend, is increasingly being trapped within the Earth system, particularly by the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Of the many risks and threats to human health that humanity must confront, the book focuses especially on those arising from climate change. However, these risks cannot be separated from other drivers of global health, including politics, power imbalances, human exploitation (both of other people and of nature) and the shadow of nuclear weapons; themes which recur throughout the book.

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Necessarily, all chapters are time-bound synopses. In a book of this length, chapters cannot be comprehensive, nor can all topics be covered. Instead, we seek to identify key principles, with citations that introduce non-specialists and students to the vast and rich literature from which all contributors draw. We also believe that understanding the past helps us to understand and, to an extent, to forecast the future. Thus, several chapters explore historical aspects. Many also respect a strong “ecological” theme.

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Climate change and planetary health

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A succinct definition of planetary health is the “health of civilization and the state of the natural systems on which it depends” (Whitmee et al., 2015). This definition is relevant to this book’s scope, and some readers may wonder if we should have altered our title. There are several reasons we resisted. One is to reflect the substantial overlap of authors and subjects with the first edition. Another is that climate change, while a substantial component of planetary health does not fully overlap with planetary health. Chapter four, however, the updated version of the titular chapter from the first edition, explores this topic in more detail, and is now called “climate change, global health and planetary health”.

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Changes to this edition

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This edition has eight sections, compared to seven in the first edition. Section two, which has been added, has six chapters grouped around the theme of ecology and health – including “human” ecology and human “carrying capacity”. Another important change is the addition of a chapter on the risk of nuclear weapons, together with three mini-chapters on aspects of inequality (each of these is added to section 1).

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Finally, we thank the many authors, reviewers, and others who have helped us to finalise this book. We especially thank Dr Kim van Daalen, whose input led to an expansion of the book’s scope. We also thank the staff of CABI, especially David Hemming. All errors are our responsibility, of course.

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Reference

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Whitmee, S., Haines, A., Beyrer, C., Boltz, F., Capon, A.G., et al. (2015) Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health. The Lancet, 386, 1973–2028. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60901-1