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The Need for Biodiversity Champions in Psychiatry: the Entwined Crises of Climate Change and Ecological Collapse Jacob Krzanowski1,2

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The Need for Biodiversity Champions in Psychiatry: the Entwined Crises of Climate Change and Ecological Collapse Jacob Krzanowski1,2 SPECIAL ARTICLE The need for biodiversity champions in psychiatry: the entwined crises of climate change and ecological collapse Jacob Krzanowski1,2 BJPsych Bulletin (2021) 45, 238–243, doi:10.1192/bjb.2021.44 1South London and Maudsley NHS Summary The past 20 years have seen the disappearance and degradation of Foundation Trust, London, UK; 2Royal biodiversity on earth at unprecedented rates. This phenomenon shares similar drivers College of Psychiatrists, London, UK to those behind climate change yet requires its own solutions. The twin catastrophes Correspondence to Jacob Krzanowski of climate change and biodiversity loss demonstrate how our health is bound up in ([email protected]) the vitality of this planet. There has been an increasing effort on the part of First received 15 Dec 2020, final revision 31 Mar 2021, accepted 14 Apr 2021 healthcare professionals to appreciate this relationship, as evidenced by the growing influence of planetary health as a discipline. However, the health impacts of © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of biodiversity loss have been less focused on than those brought on by climate change. the Royal College of Psychiatrists. This is Psychiatry’s appreciation of the interface between environments and our health, an Open Access article, distributed under alongside the evidence for the connection between nature and mental health the terms of the Creative Commons specifically, prompt psychiatrists to ensure that the institution of healthcare throws Attribution licence (http:// fl creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), its in uence equally behind solutions to climate change as well as biodiversity loss. which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any Keywords Planetary health; psychiatry; public mental health; biodiversity; climate medium, provided the original work is change. properly cited. This article is both a provocation and a call to action for uncertainty we should allow ourselves to be compelled by psychiatry to champion biodiversity while raising awareness a change to life on earth described as the sixth planetary of the risk of ecological collapse. Although the connection extinction, marked by a rate of extinction nearly 1000 may not at first be intuitive, our influence as healthcare pro- times pre-human levels.5,6 It therefore falls to healthcare fessionals, appreciation for health as a concept defined by professionals to mitigate not only the consequences of cli- wellness rather than an absence of disease and understand- mate change but also the equally concerning trend of eco- ing of how sick environments create illness, both seen and logical destruction. unseen, place responsibility firmly at our table to advance the cause of all life on earth.1 These arguments are underscored as international orga- Climate change: one driver of biodiversity loss nisations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) among many increasingly recognise the causal links between our health The planetary crisis we are facing is more complicated and and biodiversity loss.2 This is particularly important because worse than was first imagined. For decades, scientists have framing the crisis through the lens of health may prove to be understood that the planet is getting hotter.7 As the tem- instrumental in shifting the tide towards the unified action perature rises, we are facing changes to the climate that needed. are difficult to predict and harder to control. Climate change In fact, new evidence is rapidly verifying that the loss of looks like rising water levels, protracted and intensified heat biodiversity in both quantity and quality has real impacts on waves, changes to water composition and the degradation of our health, both mental and physical.2,3 This evidence is ecosystems.7 These changes to the ‘weather’ are directly tied finally catching up with associations between nature and to increasing food and water scarcity, which in turn lead to healthfulness that exist across many cultures, and the displacement through forced migration and armed conflict.8 knowledge central to many indigenous cultures.4 , While The consensus among those studying this phenomenon this is an important development we should respect that is that climate change is a product of changes to human gaps in our knowledge and apprehension regarding specific behaviour since the industrial revolution.9 Through unregu- correlations should not preclude action. lated extraction and consumption of carbon-based fuels, We have been slow to respond to climate change and the global temperature has steadily increased, long after must bear this in mind. At the same time, in the face of this association was first suspected in 1896 by Swedish 238 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 29 Sep 2021 at 05:28:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use. SPECIAL ARTICLE Krzanowski Biodiversity champions in psychiatry scientist Svante Arrhenius. The establishment of the sustainable development goals and the UN’s choice to desig- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by the nate the 2020s as the ‘decade for eco-system restoration’.16,17 United Nations in 1988 cemented a global commitment to Biodiversity loss and climate change share human behaviour better understand the development and implications of cli- as their root cause, but while their solutions are mutually mate change. beneficial, they demand distinct strategies. The centrality As we grapple with the scale of the crisis, the need to of biodiversity to the survival of all life, coupled with its unify climate change with social justice is increasingly demand for solutions apart from ones that address sustain- underscored. People who have experienced and will continue ability or climate change per se, is why biodiversity loss spe- to experience the greatest impacts of climate change on cifically requires champions among healthcare professionals. health are the least responsible for greenhouse gas emis- sions.10 To date, the vast proportion of total historical emis- sions has been produced by a proportionally small number of 10 Planetary health: an opportunity for healthcare’s wealthy countries. However, in the past 20 years we are growing role now coming to the sobering fact that climate change and its injustices are not all we must confront. Why has change been so slow to come? Resistance has been The year 2020 marked the end of a 10-year period desig- in large part cultivated by corporations, politicians and the nated the ‘UN decade on biodiversity’. The stated aim of the interests of the wealth that entwines them.18 In our own effort was to live in harmony with nature. This commitment community, David Pencheon, a former head of the NHS was in part brought on by alarming reports such as the Sustainable Development Unit, has referenced a kind of Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005, which noted ‘moral offset’ that means health professionals feel less moti- that humans had changed ecosystems more rapidly in the vated to act on the climate crisis because their work already previous 50 years than at any point before.11 improves lives.19 Health services also prioritise acute illness Biodiversity is a contraction of biological diversity and over prevention, discounting future risk in favour of short- simply put is the stuff of life itself. The 2005 report defines term medical responsibility.19 biodiversity as variability among living organisms from all At the start of the millennium, the importance of an sources, including terrestrial, marine and other aquatic eco- interdisciplinary approach to health and climate change systems, and the ecological complexes of which they are was recognised. Institutions such as the Lancet sounded part.11 Biodiversity itself is the basis of the complex of plants, the need to frame the crisis in terms of its effects on health. animals and microorganisms that make up an ecosystem.11 Although not a new term at the time, the concept of planet- The accumulation of all of our planet’s ecosystems is encap- ary health was fully endorsed in 2015 by a joint effort sulated by the biosphere.12 between the Lancet and the Rockefeller Foundation, a sign To help us understand our dependence on these systems that healthcare as an institution had begun to throw its the concept of ecosystem services was created. This model weight behind a response to the planetary crisis.20 looks to explain all the ways in which we are connected in Planetary health in the simplest sense makes the asser- the web of life and outlines that ecosystems: (a) provide tion that human health is inextricably linked to the health of resources such as food, water, timber, medicines and fibre, the planet. It can be understood as a discipline that borrows (b) regulate climate, foods, disease, waste and water quality, from public and environmental health but is bold and expli- (c) contribute to cultural experiences such as recreation, citly political. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet, aesthetic enjoyment and spiritual fulfilment and (d) support described planetary health in 2018 as ‘an inquiry into our soil formation, photosynthesis and nutrient cycling.11 The total world. The unity of life and the forces that shape truth has been plainly described by the environmental activ- those lives’.21 ist Satish Kumar in the following stark terms: ‘We are At the heart of planetary health lies a paradox that many nature. What we do to nature, we do to ourselves’.13 of the gains to health have come from an untold exploitation Since the mid-2000s, global efforts to address the col- of the environment.22 The field does not shy away from this lapse of biodiversity have emerged, most notably with the uncomfortable fact and indeed is based on the belief that a establishment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy more balanced relationship wherein both humans and the Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
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