Papers by Chris Zielinski
Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, Oct 25, 2023
Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals ... more Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals to recognise that climate change and biodiversity loss are one indivisible crisis and must be tackled together to preserve health and avoid catastrophe. This overall environmental crisis is now so severe as to be a global health emergency. The world is currently responding to the climate crisis and the nature crisis as if they were separate challenges. This is a dangerous mistake. The 28th Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change is about to be held in Dubai while the 16th COP on biodiversity is due to be held in Turkey in 2024. The research communities that provide the evidence for the two COPs are unfortunately largely separate, but they were brought together for a workshop in 2020 when they concluded that: "Only by considering climate and biodiversity as parts of the same complex problem…can solutions be developed that avoid maladaptation and maximize the beneficial outcomes." As the health world has recognised with the development of the concept of planetary health, the natural world is made up of one overall interdependent system. Damage to one subsystem can create feedback that damages another -for example, drought, wildfires, floods and the other effects of rising global temperatures destroy plant life, and lead to soil erosion and so inhibit carbon storage, which means more global warming . Climate change is set to overtake deforestation and other landuse change as the primary driver of nature loss . Nature has a remarkable power to restore. For example, deforested land can revert to forest through natural regeneration, and marine phytoplankton, which act as natural carbon stores, turn over one billion tonnes of photosynthesising biomass every eight days . Indigenous land and sea management has a particularly important role to play in regeneration and continuing care . Restoring one subsystem can help another -for example, replenishing soil could help remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere on a vast scale . But actions that may benefit one subsystem can harm another -for example, planting forests with one type of tree can remove carbon dioxide from the air but can damage the biodiversity that is fundamental to healthy ecosystems . Human health is damaged directly by both the climate crisis, as the journals have described in previous editorials , and by the nature crisis . This indivisible planetary crisis will have major effects on health as a result of the disruption of social and economic systems -shortages of land, shelter, food, and water, exacerbating poverty, which in turn will lead to mass migration and conflict. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, air pollution, and the spread of infectious diseases are some of the major health threats exacerbated by climate change . "Without nature, we have nothing," was UN Secretary-General António Guterres's blunt summary at the biodiversity COP in Montreal last year . Even if we could keep global warming below an increase of 1.5 ˚C over pre-industrial levels, we could still cause catastrophic harm to health by destroying nature.
Cardiologia Croatica, Sep 30, 2023
Turkish Journal of Biochemistry
Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, Aug 1, 2023
COP27 Climate Change Conference: Urgent action needed for Africa and the world
The National Medical Journal of India, Feb 16, 2023
Journal of general internal medicine, Mar 25, 2024
International Journal of Public Health, Nov 14, 2023
Revista De Saude Publica, Sep 13, 2023
Time to treat the climate and nature crisis as one indivisible global health emergency
Microbes and Infectious Diseases (Print), Oct 31, 2023
Western Journal of Emergency Medicine
European Heart Journal - Case Reports
British Journal of General Practice
Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals ... more Over 200 health journals call on the United Nations, political leaders, and health professionals to recognise that climate change and biodiversity loss are one indivisible crisis and must be tackled together to preserve health and avoid catastrophe. This overall environmental crisis is now so severe as to be a global health emergency. The world is currently responding to the climate crisis and the nature crisis as if they were separate challenges. This is a dangerous mistake. The 28 th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change is about to be held in Dubai while the 16 th meeting of the COP on biodiversity is due to be held in Turkey in 2024. The research communities that provide the evidence for the two COPs are unfortunately largely separate, but they were brought together for a workshop in 2020 when they concluded that:
JAMA Dermatology, 2023
REFERENCES 1. Gao Y, Fulk T, Mori W, et al. Diversity and career goals of graduating allopathic m... more REFERENCES 1. Gao Y, Fulk T, Mori W, et al. Diversity and career goals of graduating allopathic medical students pursuing careers in dermatology. JAMA Dermatol.
African Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology
The danger is significant and growing. The nuclear-armed states must eliminate their nuclear arse... more The danger is significant and growing. The nuclear-armed states must eliminate their nuclear arsenals before they eliminate us. The health community played a decisive part during the Cold War and, more recently, in developing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We must retake this challenge
Curationis, Nov 4, 2022
Republic of the Congo Wealthy nations must step up support for Africa and vulnerable countries in... more Republic of the Congo Wealthy nations must step up support for Africa and vulnerable countries in addressing past, present and future impacts of climate change The 2022 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) paints a dark picture of the future of life on earth, characterised by ecosystem collapse, species extinction, and climate hazards such as heatwaves and floods (IPCC 2022). These are all linked to physical and mental health problems, with direct and indirect consequences of increased morbidity and mortality. To avoid these catastrophic health effects across all regions of the globe, there is broad agreement-as 231 health journals argued together in 2021-that the rise in global temperature must be limited to less than 1.5 °C compared with pre-industrial levels. While the Paris Agreement of 2015 outlines a global action framework that incorporates providing climate finance to developing countries, this support has yet to materialise (UN 2022). COP27 is the fifth Conference of the Parties (COP) to be organised in Africa since its inception in 1995. Ahead of this meeting, we-as health journal editors from across the continent-call for urgent action to ensure it is the COP that finally delivers climate justice for Africa and vulnerable countries. This is essential not just for the health of those countries, but for the health of the whole world. Africa has suffered disproportionately although it has done little to cause the crisis The climate crisis has had an impact on the environmental and social determinants of health across Africa, leading to devastating health effects (Climate Investment Funds 2020). Impacts on health can result directly from environmental shocks and indirectly through socially mediated effects (WHO 2016). Climate change-related risks in Africa include flooding, drought, heatwaves, reduced food production, and reduced labour productivity (Trisos et al. 2022). Droughts in sub-Saharan Africa have tripled between 1970-1979 and 2010-2019 (World Bank 2021). In 2018, devastating cyclones impacted 2.2 million people in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe (World Bank 2021). In west and central Africa, severe flooding resulted in mortality and forced migration from loss of shelter, cultivated land, and livestock (Opoku et al. 2021).
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Papers by Chris Zielinski
knowledge that is embedded in local traditions, stories, and other repositories of local wisdom). The unit explores how to combine and integrate such “local” knowledge with “global” knowledge to facilitate the actions of health workers and managers at the community level. Particular emphasis is given to the role of information and communication technologies – specifically the Internet – in this endeavour.
• an overview of the explosion of information
• the rationale for improving the management of
knowledge
• definitions of key terms.
gives the positive characteristics of this knowledge. It also focuses very much on the
need to include local knowledge, in addition to “scientific” knowledge, into the
production of knowledge.
This is one of the reasons that the utility of information in development is so hard to measure. How can development activities move beyond what is difficult (measuring their own efforts) to what might be impossible (analysing the pervasive spread of information throughout the developing world, and measuring any benefits of this information)? Most indicators available are process indicators – the sales figures of commercial companies, the free distribution numbers in non-profits – and not indicators of how good or useful the content itself was. Convincing qualitative indicators are hard to find.
The paper discusses the divide between the information rich and information poor, the sustainability of information projects, financial requirements for monitoring and evaluation of information projects, and notes that the killer application of the Internet is education, and that information is the core of education.