close

Advancing an environmentally responsible physiotherapy

 

The world faces complex and interrelated crises… Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, rapid urbanization, geopolitical conflict and militarization, demographic change, population displacement, poverty, and widespread inequity create risks of future crises even more severe than those experienced today. Responses require investments that integrate planetary, societal, community and individual health and well-being (WHO 2021 Geneva Charter for Wellbeing)

 

 The impact of human activities on our planet’s natural systems has been intensifying rapidly in the past several decades, leading to disruption and transformation of most natural systems. These disruptions in the atmosphere, oceans, and across the terrestrial land surface are not only driving species to extinction, they pose serious threats to human health and wellbeing. Characterising and addressing these threats requires a paradigm shift (Myers, 2017)

Action at the level of direct drivers of nature decline, although necessary, is not sufficient … a sustainable global future’ is ‘only possible with urgent transformative change that tackles the root causes: the interconnected economic, socio-cultural, demographic, political, institutional, and technological indirect drivers behind the direct drivers (Diaz et al., 2019)

BERJAYA

About

An international community of academics, clinicians, practitioners and students interested in exploring and advancing the field of environmental physiotherapy. 

BERJAYA

Blog

Follow our latest musings on environmental physiotherapy. Ideas, inspiration, news, publications, events, and more. 

BERJAYA

Join

Become part of the first international community of physiotherapists with an interest in researching, developing, and practising physiotherapy at a planetary scale. 

BERJAYA

Resources

A growing selection of resources carefully selected by members of the EPA to inspire your thinking and practice of environmental physiotherapy. 

Sugar consumption is bad for human health, but have you thought about the effect of sugar production?

We are all aware of the negative health effects associated with sugar consumption, but have you thought about the planetary health implications of its production? Holidaying in Far North Queensland a few years ago brought home to me the scale of the destruction of the...

Animal Physiotherapy

Animal physiotherapy began with surprising enthusiasm, supported from its earliest days by none other than Lord Mountbatten (1939). It began to gain recognition and caught the attention of visionary therapists and forward-thinking institutions who believed that...

Los límites planetarios: cuando el planeta dice ¡Basta!

¿Sabes cuáles son los límites planetarios? Tras el extraordinario progreso de las Ciencias de la Tierra y de los sistemas naturales durante las últimas décadas; en el 2009, un grupo de 29 científicos liderados por Johan Rockström comenzaron a definir lo que hoy se...

What can physiotherapists learn from COVID-19 about the importance of accessing outdoor spaces?

For many of us, COVID-19 has meant restrictions on what we do and where we go. These restrictions may include lockdowns, which prevent us from leaving our homes, through to supervised quarantine, often in hotels. These restrictions have been criticised because of the...

If you have any thoughts, ideas or questions about environmental physiotherapy,
we would love to hear from you anytime

2 + 9 =