Julian Sheather, PhD
Ethics Consultant, World Health Organization
Abstract: According to the World Health Organization, climate change is the single biggest threat facing humanity. Tackling the health threats of climate change, including by mitigation and adaptation, will be critical in the coming decades. Climate change gives rise to profound questions of equity or fairness. Those nations who have contributed most to climate change are not the ones most affected by it. Those nations and peoples most effected by it are often those with the fewest resources to tackle it. In addition, climate change has profound implications for younger generations, and for generations as yet unborn. Responding to the health impacts of climate change therefore involves complex questions of global and intergenerational equity and fairness. Climate change also puts centre-stage the dependence of human health on the health of the world's ecosystems. This gives rise to challenging ethical questions about whether duties are owed to non-human parts of the biosphere. This talk will explore the range of health-related equity issues resulting from climate change.
Sponsored by the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics
Location and Address
Online