Vector Issue 12 - 2011

www.ghn.amsa.org.au
28
7 MDG
Millennium development goal (MDG) seven
is to ensure environmental sustainability 1 .
To help us understand how this is defined,
the goal is broken down into several ‘targets’.
The targets pertain to things like optimising the
percentage of land area covered by forest, protecting
biodiversity, improving the efficiency of energy use,
reducing per capita CO 2
emissions and consumption
of ozone depleting chlorofluorocarbons, improving
population access to clean water and sanitation,
and access to adequate housing for the most
impoverished. The achievement of these targets
would not only improve the health of our ecosystem
but also directly improve human health and assist
ensure environmental sustainability
in the mitigation of climate change. We can assist
in making MDG reality by applying these global
targets to the local communities in which we
participate. Perhaps most appropriately, as future
health professionals, we should consider the ways in
which we can assist the health sector to acknowledge
the ecological footprint of its business, and duly take
steps to rectify this blight.
‘‘
‘‘
scientific consensus that, as a consequence of human
vector FEB 2011
our nation has made
minimal progress in
lifting its ecological
game
In the ten years since then Australian-PM John
Howard was signatory to the United Nations
Millennium Declaration in the year 2000, our
nation has made minimal progress in lifting its
ecological game. This is despite knowing that there is
activities, the earth’s climate is warming. During the
twentieth century Australia’s average surface air
temperature has increased by 0.7 0 C and rainfall has
substantially reduced 2 . The rise has been attributed
to our reliance on the combustion of fossil fuels for
energy generation and transport and the concomitant
rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases 3 . Disheartingly, we are
locked in to a further warming of at least 0.2-1.0 0 C
by the year 2100 2 , however much larger rises are
likely to be in store if we are unable to dramatically
reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade 2 .
In addition to this, extreme weather events such as
tropical cyclones, heat waves, and floods will become
more frequent. In this way climate change will have
detrimental impacts on the environment, economy,
and public health.
Rich countries such as Australia are better placed
than many other nations to be able to fund climate
mitigation and adaptation strategies. Mitigation is
essentially primary prevention to contain a rise in
surface air temperature through cuts to greenhouse
gas emissions, whilst adaptation is a form of
secondary prevention to allow us to live with the
inevitable changes in weather patterns; tertiary
prevention is tantamount to disaster response to the
predicted increase in extreme climate events. As in
medicine primary prevention, although unpopular, is
a much more cost-effective approach than having to
deal with a series of emergencies.
It is in this context that the Australian healthcare
system is gradually adopting a triple-bottom line
approach to evaluation, thereby moving away from an
arcane system that treated environmental impacts as
an ‘externality’ with little mandate or incentive for
hospitals, universities and other large institutions
to reduce their carbon footprint . By targeting waste,
staff and patient transport and utility (water, energy)
consumption some such facilities are starting to
make moves. Actions are starting to pop up - ride
to work days, waste reduction programs - all
contributing to the broader tapestry of sustainabilitypromotion.
With the knowledge that there is no health, or
economy, without the environment many current and
future health professionals such as ourselves realise
that to concern for population health necessitates
taking action to ensure environmental sustainability.
Thus to take care of the the environment is not
merely a case of “doing the right thing, it is also an
opportunity to make cost savings, experience health
co-benefits and mitigate some effects of climate
change.