[11-2] Planetary Health Humanities: Responding to COVID times
Presentation language：English
The coronavirus pandemic has shattered our world with increased morbidity, mortality, and personal/social sufferings, and we are now in a biomedical race for protective equipment, viral testing, and vaccine creation.
But what is the role of health humanities in these viral times? First, we need health humanities to empower narrative agency around the story of COVID-19. Narrow biomedical stories neglect the more expansive “planetary health” possibilities. The 2015 Lancet Commission on Planetary Health makes it clear that environmental destruction, driven largely by overconsumption, create the conditions for increasing zoonotic pathogens like coronavirus. Emerging infectious diseases are thus not a surprise—they are the expected outcome of environmental devastation. In this context, health humanities has a crucial role in re-storying COVID-19 as a wake-up call toward more sustainable living.
Second, COVID-19 creates a bio-ethical climate where health humanities can and should link with environmental humanities. The goal of this link is to continue re-storying health humanities itself toward promotion of planetary health and well-being. Well-being is critical here because environmental humanities tells us that planetary destruction not only causes ill-being, but that ill-being is a key driver of planetary destruction. For health humanities, a basic role and narrative identity starts to emerge—we should become a planetary health and well-being humanities.