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Dear Friends of the Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health,
I want to celebrate a special anniversary. Ten years ago this summer, a group of us launched the transdisciplinary field of Planetary Health. In terms of an operational definition,
“Planetary Health is a field focused on improving the understanding of, and ability to measure, the public health impacts of anthropogenic environmental change, so as to inform decision-making in the land-use planning, ocean-use planning, environmental conservation, and public health policy realms. As other commentators have noted, what cannot be measured cannot be managed. The type of transdisciplinary work that planetary health by its nature demands can help in efforts to ensure that the public health consequences of natural resource management decisions get explicitly factored into these decisions at a range of scales, instead of remaining in the realm of vague and poorly quantified externalities.”
At a time in the U.S. when the key governmental agencies responsible for environmental stewardship and public health are effectively being dismantled, with academia and renewable energy (amongst other keys to a sustainable future) under attack, it is admittedly hard to maintain hope. But we must not give up on the science we need to guide our future—all the wanton destruction we are currently witnessing will have to be reversed. We will need to rebuild these entities if we are to have any hope of continuing the United States’ remarkable track record of science-based innovation and associated economic success. I welcome you to watch our 2015 launch of the Planetary Health concept at the Aspen Ideas Festival. We’ve made great progress over the past decade on the challenges described during that launch, and we must and we can continue to build upon this work to ensure a healthy future for humanity and all life on earth.
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