Environmental sustainability in therapeutic practice (original) (raw)

Environmental sustainability is probably the most significant factor in health and it is the responsibility of all practitioners to be aware of its various dimensions in relation to impact on human life (Beltran et al 2016; Jennings et al 2016). It is pretty well universally understood that most current climate change is a consequence of human behaviour. The clarity of skies following world flight bans after 9/11, and the international reduction of pollution during the COVID 19 lockdowns are clear illustrations of this. They demonstrate the threat that humans pose not only to themselves, but to the planet. The global emergency created through COVID 19, as has been noted for other pandemics (Madhav et al 2017), may have been facilitated by poor environmental controls and a lack of sensibilities, and procedures for its limitation has certainly relied on humans changing their behaviours. Enforcement of the measures could not be totally effective, they had to rely on people voluntarily adjusting their lives and habits to new protocols. COVID 19 has been a significant event, and while it has affected a proportion of the world’s population, the wider effects have touched almost everyone in the globe, and are still to be played out. One of the key threats to health – aside from climate change – has been that of a global pandemic, and it was always anticipated that climate change would interplay with any such development as the UN environment programme points out (2020).