Biodiversity, Global Health Equity, and Lost and Found Wisdom: an urgent research and policy agenda in a time of crisis

20th April 12.45-2pm
MANSON LECTURE THEATRE

Professor Carolyn Stephens, Reader in Ecology and Global Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine/ Professor of Ecology and Indigenous Health, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina (based in Argentina)

Scientists, UN agencies, and indigenous and local communities, agree that we have reached a critical time for biodiversity globally, as biodiversity loss reach unprecedented levels. Western science is now divided into two camps. Some scientists believe that the only way to halt biodiversity loss is to produce evidence that links biodiversity to ecosystem service and human health. Others suggest that the situation is too urgent, and that we need now to introduce a process adapted from emergency medicine – Triage -- to select the planet’s most “important” species and/or ecosystems for emergency conservation. Meanwhile, some of the world’s most isolated indigenous and local communities view their place in their local and global ecosystem with more holistic eyes. They are fighting to protect their ecosystems for their own health and well-being, but also for that of fellow humans and the planet. This seminar discusses these debates, and explores the vital research and policy agenda that might emerge if we work with indigenous and local communities to understand our links to, and our place in, our biodiverse planet.

Carolyn Stephens has worked on health equity and sustainable development at the LSHTM for 20 years. She has worked with indigenous communities for over 15 years and is currently based with the Faculty of Medicine, of the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, in the UNT’s 14000 hectare biological reserve in the Andean Yungas (or Cloud Forest) of Tucumán in Northern Argentina.

She is currently editor of a focus issue on Biodiversity, Human Health Well-being for Environmental Research Letters (add link). This seminar is a joint meeting of the LSHTM Centre for Global Change and Health, and the Bloomsbury Colleges Ecohealth Group.

The seminar will be held at the LSHTM and broadcast by webinar internationally.