Human Health, Well-Being, and Global Ecological Scenarios

Spatiotemporal Change Analysis and Future Scenario of LULC Using the CA-ANN Approach: A Case Study of the Greater Bay Area, China

Land use land cover (LULC) transition analysis is a systematic approach that helps in understanding physical and human involvement in the natural environment and sustainable development. The study of the spatiotemporal shifting pattern of LULC, the simulation of future scenarios and the intensity analysis at the interval, category and transition levels provide a comprehensive prospect to determine current and future development scenarios. In this study, we used multitemporal remote sensing data from 1980–2020 with a 10-year interval, explanatory variables (Digital Elevation Model (DEM), slope, population, GDP, distance from roads, distance from the city center and distance from streams) and an integrated CA-ANN approach within the MOLUSCE plugin of QGIS to model the spatiotemporal change transition potential and future LULC simulation in the Greater Bay Area. The results indicate that physical and socioeconomic driving factors have significant impacts on the landscape patterns. Over the last four decades, the study area experienced rapid urban expansion (4.75% to 14.75%), resulting in the loss of forest (53.49% to 50.57%), cropland (21.85% to 16.04%) and grassland (13.89% to 12.05%). The projected results (2030–2050) also endorse the increasing trend in built-up area, forest, and water at the cost of substantial amounts of cropland and grassland.

A Framework for the Eltonian Niche of Humans

Recent research has highlighted several influential roles that humans play in ecosystems, including that of a superpredator, hyperkeystone species, and niche constructor. This work has begun to describe the Eltonian niche of humans, which encompasses humanity's cumulative ecological and evolutionary roles in trophic systems. However, we lack a unifying framework that brings together these strands of research, links them to ecoevolutionary and sociocultural theory, and identifies current research needs. In this article, we present such a framework in hope of facilitating a more holistic approach to operationalizing human roles in trophic systems across an increasingly anthropogenic biosphere. The framework underscores how humans play numerous nuanced roles in trophic systems, from top-down to bottom-up, that entail not only pernicious effects but also benefits for many nonhuman species. Such a nuanced view of the Eltonian niche of humans is important for understanding complex social–ecological system functioning and enacting effective policies and conservation measures.

Scoping the proximal and distal dimensions of climate change on health and wellbeing

The impacts of climate on health and wellbeing occur in time and space and through a range of indirect, complicated mechanisms. This diversity of pathways has major implications for national public health planning and influence on interventions that might help to mitigate and adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions, nationally and internationally. This paper draws upon evidence from public health and adverse impact studies across climate science, hydrology, agriculture, public health, and the social sciences. It presents a conceptual model to support decision-making by recognizing both the proximal and distal pathways from climate-induced environmental change to national health and wellbeing. The proximal and distal pathways associated with food security, migration and mobility illustrate the diverse climate change influences in different geographic locations over different timescales. We argue that greater realization and articulation of proximal and distal pathways should radically alter how climate change is addressed as a national and international public health challenge.

Climate change threats to population health and well-being: the imperative of protective solutions that will last

BACKGROUND

The observational evidence of the impacts of climate conditions on human health is accumulating. A variety of direct, indirect, and systemically mediated health effects have been identified. Excessive daily heat exposures create direct effects, such as heat stroke (and possibly death), reduce work productivity, and interfere with daily household activities. Extreme weather events, including storms, floods, and droughts, create direct injury risks and follow-on outbreaks of infectious diseases, lack of nutrition, and mental stress. Climate change will increase these direct health effects. Indirect effects include malnutrition and under-nutrition due to failing local agriculture, spread of vector-borne diseases and other infectious diseases, and mental health and other problems caused by forced migration from affected homes and workplaces. Examples of systemically mediated impacts on population health include famine, conflicts, and the consequences of large-scale adverse economic effects due to reduced human and environmental productivity. This article highlights links between climate change and non-communicable health problems, a major concern for global health beyond 2015.

DISCUSSION

Detailed regional analysis of climate conditions clearly shows increasing temperatures in many parts of the world. Climate modelling indicates that by the year 2100 the global average temperature may have increased by 34°C unless fundamental reductions in current global trends for greenhouse gas emissions are achieved. Given other unforeseeable environmental, social, demographic, and geopolitical changes that may occur in a plus-4-degree world, that scenario may comprise a largely uninhabitable world for millions of people and great social and military tensions.

CONCLUSION

It is imperative that we identify actions and strategies that are effective in reducing these increasingly likely threats to health and well-being. The fundamental preventive strategy is, of course, climate change mitigation by significantly reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, especially long-acting carbon dioxide (CO(2)), and by increasing the uptake of CO(2) at the earth's surface. This involves urgent shifts in energy production from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, energy conservation in building design and urban planning, and reduced waste of energy for transport, building heating/cooling, and agriculture. It would also involve shifts in agricultural production and food systems to reduce energy and water use particularly in meat production. There is also potential for prevention via mitigation, adaptation, or resilience building actions, but for the large populations in tropical countries, mitigation of climate change is required to achieve health protection solutions that will last.

Infectious disease emergence and global change: thinking systemically in a shrinking world

BACKGROUND

Concern intensifying that emerging infectious diseases and global environmental changes that could generate major future human pandemics.

METHOD

A focused literature review was undertaken, partly informed by a forthcoming report on environment, agriculture and infectious diseases of poverty, facilitated by the Special Programme for Tropical Diseases.

RESULTS

More than ten categories of infectious disease emergence exist, but none formally analyse past, current or future burden of disease. Other evidence suggests that the dominant public health concern focuses on two informal groupings. Most important is the perceived threat of newly recognised infections, especially viruses that arise or are newly discovered in developing countries that originate in species exotic to developed countries, such as non-human primates, bats and rodents. These pathogens may be transmitted by insects or bats, or via direct human contact with bushmeat. The second group is new strains of influenza arising from intensively farmed chickens or pigs, or emerging from Asian "wet markets" where several bird species have close contact. Both forms appear justified because of two great pandemics: HIV/AIDS (which appears to have originated from bushmeat hunting in Africa before emerging globally) and Spanish influenza, which killed up to 2.5% of the human population around the end of World War I. Insufficiently appreciated is the contribution of the milieu which appeared to facilitate the high disease burden in these pandemics. Additionally, excess anxiety over emerging infectious diseases diverts attention from issues of greater public health importance, especially: (i) existing (including neglected) infectious diseases and (ii) the changing milieu that is eroding the determinants of immunity and public health, caused by adverse global environmental changes, including climate change and other components of stressed life and civilisation-supporting systems.

CONCLUSIONS

The focus on novel pathogens and minor forms of anti-microbial resistance in emerging disease literature is unjustified by their burden of disease, actual and potential, and diverts attention from far more important health problems and determinants. There is insufficient understanding of systemic factors that promote pandemics. Adverse global change could generate circumstances conducive to future pandemics with a high burden of disease, arising via anti-microbial and insecticidal resistance, under-nutrition, conflict, and public health breakdown.

A social-ecological perspective on health in urban environments

Human health in our cities is an expression of complex social and environmental interactions not previously faced in our long evolutionary history. In this paper, we present a social-ecological perspective on the complex nature of emerging public health problems in cities and identify some of the research questions emerging from this new view of the city. We argue that an integrative urban science agenda is needed not only to inform urban policy, planning and design, but also to alert people to the consequences of and trade-offs around their choices and behaviours.

Toward a Global Agenda for Research in Environmental Epidemiology

The global environment is in critical decline. Whether one's concern about environmental epidemiology stems from the perspectives of environmental health, climate change, ecological collapse, or growing inequity, clear problems exist. Natural capital resources are being depleted; disregard for the integrity of ecosystems is entrenched in current business practices. Indeed, despite increasing rhetoric to the contrary, the disregard displayed by those who hold power globally toward long-term sustainability and, thus, the health and well-being of future generations, could be described as wanton. Six years ago, the Millennium Development Goals were announced by the United Nations as a rallying point for action to achieve a sustainable future, particularly by reducing the gap between the "have mores" and "have nots." The attainment of these Goals is now endangered, as is, apparently, the spirit of optimism and idealism that inspired them at the Millennium Summit. We call for a reinvigoration of both concern about-and action on-sustainability. In particular, we appeal to those engaged in the field of environmental epidemiology (and other specialties with whom they engage) to consider how they might help by incorporating sustainability issues (including global ecological integrity and global environmental justice) into their own research programs. This incorporation would make a vital contribution to protect both present and future generations and to reduce resource and health gaps between North and South. Simply put, we propose that sustainability becomes integral to advancing the science of environmental epidemiology and related environmental disciplines.

Lead decline in the Indian environment resulting from the petrol-lead phase-out programme

Recently, the lead content of various environmental components has decreased in response to replacement of leaded petrol by unleaded petrol. In India, 15 research studies are here assessed with respect to lead concentrations in various environmental components during the leaded petrol phase (before 1996), the transitional phase (1996-2000) and the unleaded petrol phase (2000 onwards). The Ganga River Water exhibited a decrease in lead concentration from 18.0 microg/l in 1988 to 3.1 microg/l in 2001. In Lucknow urban centre, mean lead concentrations in the urban air decreased from 1.6 microg/m(3) in 1994 to 0.2 microg/m(3) in 2002. Lead concentrations in Dalbergia sissoo tree leaves also decreased from 18.7 microg/g dry wt. in 1994 to 8.3 microg/g dry wt. in 2004. Mean blood-lead levels of children from Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Amritsar and Lucknow urban centres have fallen from 18.1 microg/dl in the leaded petrol phase to 12.1 microg/dl in the unleaded petrol phase. The petrol-lead phase-out effort in India has reduced lead concentrations in the various environmental components after 2000. It will help to reduce the exposure of millions of people to environmental lead.