Sustainable health? Health, environment and the politics of sustainability

Abstract

The links, interrelations or interferences of environmental problems and health hazards have been the object of a growing body of literature cutting across disciplines. Different directions of research have expanded and deepened our understanding of the way health and sustainability are co-constructed, and of the role of technological innovation, public policy and citizen action in facilitating and promoting the emergence of strategies for sustainable development that consider health as one of its structuring axes. Episodes of collective mobilization over environmental problems and their connections to health problems display the relevance of this issue. Three main themes can be identified at the roots of these episodes: the health impacts of waste management procedures; the need for a reorientation of public policies – including health policies – in order to incorporate environmental concerns as a main structuring axis; and the need for health to be explicitly incorporated into strategies and policies of sustainable development. The notion of «sustainable health» is proposed as a way of articulating this need.