April 15, 2021 — The symptoms are all too obvious to anyone who is paying attention: unbreathable air, rising health problems, barely affordable food, and crazy weather. Clearly, the planet is sick. If it dies, so does the human species.
The health of the planet is the health of us all. And this is why everyone should care about planetary health.
What is planetary health?
“Planetary health” is a young term coined in 2014 by Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the medical journal The Lancet. It is a way of looking at human health in connection to the environment: the earth’s temperature, food supply, pollution, and other complex issues—issues that cannot be limited to just one field of study or area of society.
Scholars of planetary health take an interdisciplinary approach in looking into health and environmental issues, with the hope of finding solutions that are as interconnected as the problems they are trying to solve.
The term may be young, but the concept is as old as the web of life. Take, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic the world is undergoing.
The pandemic started when the SARS-CoV 2 virus jumped from its original hosts, bats, to a new one, the citizens of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, China. The rest, as we say, is history: Since people cross over national borders all the time, so did the virus, making it one of the top debilitating reasons why Time Magazine called 2020 as “the worst year ever.”1
How the virus made its terrifying crossovers is a classic case for the links among the economy, biology, culture, politics, and, ultimately, human health.
According to the World Health Organization, humans and bats hardly interact, so a virus jumping from bats to humans should be rare.2 But in Wuhan, as in many other Asian cities, wildlife and domestic animals, dead or alive, are often sold together. Thus, SARS-CoV 2 could have jumped from bats to another animal—one that humans have more contact with, such as livestock—before finally crossing over to humans. The virus also just happens to be well-adapted to human cells, allowing it to thrive in its human hosts.
But why are those virus-ridden bats in Wuhan in the first place? Do they eat bats for breakfast in China?
The answer, according to a National Geographic article3, is much more nuanced. Unlike the racist stereotype levelled against the Chinese, they do not eat everything. Eating wildlife is reportedly prevalent in some cities, like Guangzhou, but is rare in others, like Beijing. It is also practiced more by the older Chinese than the younger ones. However, it is big business: only the rich can afford exotic delicacies tagged with allegedly mysterious rejuvenating powers. This appetite of the privileged fueled a wildlife trade that resulted in what we all suffer today.
Why should it matter to Filipinos?
The Philippines’ devastating experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic—from the thousands of ill and dying, to a health system on the brink of collapse, and a worsening economy—clearly behooves all Filipinos to take planetary health seriously.
The Rockefeller Foundation’s 2017 issue of Panorama Perspectives: Conversations on Planetary Health4 shows environmental and health issues to be at the forefront of planetary health: pollution, from solid fuels (panggatong) in households to fossil fuels in industries, cause respiratory diseases; dwindling fish supply from overfishing and the warming of the oceans lead to malnutrition and poverty; and, extreme weather events bring illnesses and deaths. These are problems all too prevalent in the Philippines, to the point that most people consider them normal.
However, there is hope for us and the world, too. Planetary health is premised on this hope: that we can change our ways to solve problems that we ourselves created.
Two such bright spots are the communities of Ajuy (Iloilo) and Del Carmen (Surigao del Norte), which had been living with the dire impacts of climate change. These were featured in short films directed and produced by Renzo Guinto, a Doctor of Public Health graduate from Harvard University.5,6
Faced with rising sea levels, diseases, coral bleaching, and drought, these communities worked together to build health systems that were “climate-smart”: designed for the unique environmental and health concerns of each locality. A key innovation is the creation of a climate field school in Del Carmen, one of the first in the country, that helps farmers and fisherfolk develop sustainable practices.
The lesson from these examples is simple and clear: when we take care of the planet, we also take care of ourselves.
M. Z. MICIANO | Published in UP Manila Healthscape Special COVID-19 Issue No. 26
The CAS Planetary Health Committee
This article is from a series of features created by the College of Arts and Sciences Committee on Planetary Health of the University of the Philippines Manila. Representing various fields from the social sciences and the natural and physical sciences, the committee embodies the interdisciplinary nature of planetary health research and is working to raise awareness and interest on planetary health through research, publication, and public forums.
1. Zacharek, Stephanie. “2020 Tested Us Beyond Measure. Where Do We Go From Here?” Time Magazine. 05 December2020.
2. World Health Organization. “Origin of SARS-CoV-2.”
3. Daly, Natasha. “Chinese citizens push to abolish wildlife trade as coronavirus persists.” National Geographic. 31 January 2020.
4. “Planetary Heath 101: Information and Resources.” Panorama Perspectives: Conversations on Planetary Health (Report 1). Rockefeller Foundation. September 2017.
5. Guinto, Renzo. “Voices PH: Ajuy, Iloilo.” 12 April 2019.
6. Guinto, Renzo. “Voices PH: Del Carmen, Surigao del Norte.” 12 April 2019.
