Health Equity: 02/22/12

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

[EQ] ECOHEALTH Research in Practice - Innovative Applications of an Ecosystem Approach to Health

ECOHEALTH Research in Practice
Innovative Applications of an Ecosystem Approach to Health

Dominique F. Charron, Editor
International Development Research Centre, 2012
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Available online as PDF file [305p.] at: http://bit.ly/so4gkn

“….The ultimate objective of ecohealth research and practice is to develop environmentally sustainable, community-based interventions to improve the health of affected communities. Much success has resulted from the incorporation of community transformation and empowerment as key project objectives. In some cases, the participation of government health services has guided the design of interventions suitable for adoption by health programs. However, besides the relatively successful examples of six projects (in Ecuador, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, and Tanzania) presented in this book, project outcomes often have limited direct influence on transforming health programs and even more limited influence on health policy.

In this book, the inclusion of projects with variable influence on health policy offers the opportunity to examine both the suitability and scope of the proposed interventions and the nature of the external factors that influence their adoption by health services….”

Content:

1 Ecohealth: Origins and Approach

Part I Linking Human Health and Well-Being to Changing Rural Agro-Ecosystems

2 Introduction

3 Growing Healthy Communities: Farmer Participatory Research to Improve Child Nutrition, Food Security, and Soils in Ekwendeni, Malawi

4 Tackling Challenges to Farmers’ Health and Agro-Ecosystem Sustainability in Highland Ecuador

5 Coping with Environmental and Health Impacts in a Floricultural Region of Ecuador

6 Dietary Diversity in Lebanon and Yemen: A Tale of Two Countries

Part II Natural Resources, Ecosystems, Pollution, and Health

7 Introduction

8 An Ecosystem Study of Manganese Mining in Molango, Mexico

9 Ecohealth Research for Mitigating Health Risks of Stone Crushing and Quarrying, India

10 A Virtuous Cycle in the Amazon: Reducing Mercury Exposure from Fish Consumption Requires Sustainable Agriculture

11 Impacts on Environmental Health of Small-Scale Gold Mining in Ecuador

Part III Poverty, Ecosystems, and Vector-Borne Diseases

12 Introduction

13 Malaria Research and Management Need Rethinking: Uganda and Tanzania Case Studies
14 An Ecosystem Approach for the Prevention of Chagas Disease in Rural Guatemala

15 Preventing Dengue at the Local Level in Havana City

16 Eco-Bio-Social Research on Dengue in Asia: General Principles and a Case Study from Indonesia

Part IV Building Community Health into City Living

17 Introduction

18 Rebuilding Urban Ecosystems for Better Community

19 Understanding Water, Understanding Health: The Case of Bebnine, Lebanon

20 Water, Wastes, and Children’s Health in Low-Income Neighbourhoods of Yaoundé

Part V Building a New Field

21 Better Together: Field-Building Networks at the Frontiers of Ecohealth Research

22 Ecohealth Research in Practice

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[EQ] Sustainable Lifestyles: Today's Facts & Tomorrow's Trends

Report:

Sustainable Lifestyles: Today’s Facts & Tomorrow’s Trends

SPREAD Sustainable Lifestyles 2050

Julia Backhaus, Sylvia Breukers, Oksana Mont, Mia Paukovic, Ruth Mourik

UNEP/Wuppertal Institute Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP)

Wuppertal. Germany – 2012

Available online PDF [160p.] at: http://bit.ly/xnUjwX

“……….a synthesis of research, leading policy and practice, and stakeholder views on potential pathways toward sustainable lifestyles. The purpose of this report is to provide the necessary background information to support the SPREAD social platform participants in creating a holistic vision of sustainable lifestyles in 2050 and recommendations for a plan of action.

Because of the significance of housing, transport, food, health and society, this report focuses on these key domains. It aims to better understand the relationships between lifestyles, the conditions that frame those lifestyles, and the resulting sustainability impacts in Europe today and into the future. In addition, it identifies promising practices from across Europe that have the potential to be examples of sustainable ways of living of the future. Existing visions, scenarios

and roadmaps for more sustainable futures – from policy, research, business and civil society perspectives – are also examined in detail.

“…..· What makes a lifestyle sustainable?

· How to make sustainable lifestyles mainstream?

· How can we encourage positive trends to ensure a better future usage of our scarce natural resource base (including energy)?

The report delivers concrete examples of initiatives, such as the increase of solar water heaters (to 75% on Malta), car and bike-sharing initiatives, local food chains, urban farming, eco-villages and travel agencies offering stay-cations. The report also shows how these initiatives can benefit increased health and wellbeing and highlights key elements in order to mainstream and upscale current examples of sustainable lifestyles.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution as to how to motivate people to behave and live more healthy and sustainable. Successful initiatives are those that try to understand how to motivate and enable behavioural change among different groups of people. It is also important to make sustainable lifestyles easy, convenient, accessible and enjoyable. This requires the development of appropriate infrastructure (e.g. to encourage walking and cycling) and context-specific solutions (e.g, communal rental bikes in Paris, Barcelona, London)……….”

Main themes in this report

1. Unsustainable lifestyle trends in Europe: Food, housing and mobility as sustainability hot spots

2. Trends toward sustainability: Promising practices and social innovation

3. Influencing behaviours: Understanding diversity, context-dependency and enabling change

4. Enabling environments: Infrastructure, innovation and multi-level, multistakeholder change processes

5. Policy solutions: Fostering prosperity and healthy, sustainable ways of living

Executive Summary

Trends towards sustainability: promising practices and social innovation

Influencing behaviours: understanding diversity, contextdependency and enabling change

Enabling environments: infrastructure, innovation, economy, research and policy

Introduction

Unsustainable lifestyles and consumption patterns

Lifestyles and the international agenda

Lifestyles and the economy

Lifestyles, political and business agendas

Sustainable lifestyles and consumption patterns

What are sustainable lifestyles ?

Lifestyles

Sustainable lifestyles

Global megatrends and European lifestyles

Population trends and urbanisation

Climate change and health

Economic growth, jobs, time and well-being

Accumulation of “stuff” and marketing

Technological and social innovation

Where are current trends leading us?

Challenges and opportunities for sustainable lifestyles

Consuming

Living

Moving

Health and society

Emerging themes for sustainable lifestyles

SPREADing sustainable lifestyles

Understanding people, their behaviour and motivations to change

Diverse and tailored options for more sustainable ways of living

Innovation, infrastructure and enabling environments for resilient lifestyle change

A framework for change

Defining strategies to mainstream sustainable practices

Changing norms and values

Overcoming lock-ins at the system level

Managing multi-actor and multi-level transitions

From theory to practice and small-scale to large-scale change

Policy initiatives for large -scale changes

Global level policy initiatives

EU level policies

National policies

Policy instruments for sustainable lifestyles

Roadmap and research initiatives for large -scale changes

Scenarios and roadmaps

Research

Conclusions

Thank you.