Ecosystem Health

This book is about doing innovative research to achieve sustainable and equitable change in people’s health and well-being through improved interactions with the environment. It presents experiences from the field of ecosystem approaches to health (or ecohealth research) and some insights and lessons learned. It builds on previous literature, notably Forget (1997), Forget and Lebel (2001), Lebel (2003), and Waltner-Toews et al. (2008). Through case-studies and other contributions by researchers supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the book presents evidence of real changes in conditions of people, their health, and the ecosystems that support them. These changes were derived from applications of an ecosystem approach to health in developing regions of the world. The book also illustrates the resulting body of applied, participatory, and action research that improved health and environmental management in developing countries and, in many cases, influenced policies and practices.

The book demonstrates how decision-makers, in particular, can use the Ecohealth approach to formulate policies and solutions that are both immediately visible and sustainable over the long term.

The field of ecosystem health explores the interactions between natural systems, human health, and social organization. As decision makers require a sound, modular approach to environmental management and sustainable development, ecosystem health assessment indicators are increasingly used across any number of applications. The Handbook of Ecologic

Publisher Description

Ecosystem Health presents information to help the environmental sciences community further understand the relationships between ecosystem health and human health. By exploring preventative, diagnostic and prognostic aspects of ecosystem management and using case-study examples, the book takes the reader from theory to practice in this emerging integrative science.

Continuing in the tradition of its bestselling predecessor, the Handbook of Ecological Indicators for Assessment of Ecosystem Health, Second Edition brings together world-class editors and contributors who have been at the forefront of ecosystem health assessment research for decades, to provide a sound approach to environmental management and sust

Biodiversity Change and Human Health brings together leading experts from the natural science and social science realms as well as the medical community to explore the explicit linkages between human-driven alterations of biodiversity and documented impacts of those changes on human health. The book utilizes multidisciplinary approaches to explore and address the complex interplay between natural biodiversity and human health and well-being. The five parts examine health trade-offs between competing uses of biodiversity (highlighting synergistic situations in which conservation of natural biodiversity actually promotes human health and well-being); relationships between biodiversity and quality of life that have developed over ecological and evolutionary time; the effects of changing biodiversity on provisioning of ecosystem services, and how they have affected human health; the role of biodiversity in the spread of infectious disease; native biodiversity as a resource for traditional and modern medicine Biodiversity Change and Human Health synthesizes our current understanding and identifies major gaps in knowledge as it places all aspects of biodiversity and health interactions within a common framework. Contributors explore potential points of crossover among disciplines (both in ways of thinking and of specific methodologies) that could ultimately expand opportunities for humans to both live sustainably and enjoy a desirable quality of life.

Recognized as an outstanding educational product by the 2001 NASA Earth Science Enterprise Education Product Peer Review "The purpose of this textbook on global ecosystem change and human health is twofold:(1) to raise awareness of changes in human health related to global ecosystem change and (2) to expand the scope of the traditional curriculum in environmental health to include the interactions of major environmental forces and public health on a global scale."—from the Introduction Ecosystem Change and Public Health focuses on how human health is affected by global ecosystem changes. It is the first textbook devoted to this emerging field, offering a global perspective on research methods and emphasizing empirical investigations of health outcomes in combination with integrated assessment for policy development. The book covers such topics as global climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, water resources management, and ecology and infectious disease. Case studies of cholera, malaria, the effects of water resources, and global climate change and air pollution illustrate the analysis and methodology. The book also includes a resource center describing places to start searches on the World Wide Web, guidelines for finding and evaluating information, suggested study projects, and strategies for encouraging communication among course participants.