Health for all now: from where??

Climate Crisis and Health

Ma. Fernanda Solz. Clnica Ambiental /Accin Ecolgica. Ecuador.

ECOLOGY AND HEALTH???

Popular environmentalism or ecology of the poor and multiple converging crises: health, water, air ...

Health, understood not just as the absence of sickness, but as the result of social and environmental justice put us trough a huge and complex challenge.

Health for all = social and environmental justice.

We have discussed Social Determination of Health, identifying social and economic inequality as the structural determinant of the loss of health and death.

Nowadays, discrimination operates in multiple ways, communities that suffer social and economic discrimination are always suffering at the same time environmental discrimination.

S-O: we can`t build a Health for all project if the relation between society-nature / north-south are sick, inequal. ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION DISCRIMINATION Society Nature North South Subject Object Subject Object Owner Resources First world Third World Human Beings To be appropriate, International Poor and organized in transformed, cooperation, Hungry people. society, with a distributed, Charity, Poverty certain consumed and Humanitarian ignorance and productive and excreted. aid disease reproductive NO RIGTHS. (World Bank). structure and JUST SERVICES. power relations.

S-S: Dialectical: interdependence and interinfluence.

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE:

Souths demand: the recognition of Ecological Debt

We are living in a perverse system that exploits NATURE. It considers nature as an Object and builds a sick relation between society and nature. The loss of health is just the last symptom of a sick and unequal relation between nature and society.

In a model of industrial capitalism (extractivism, agribusiness), the cost of the development promises implies that NATURE AND INDIGENOUS, POOR COMMUNITIES should absorb the impacts and externalities.

No Mr. President, not green for money, but for trees

Poor communities lack social rights. They are also exposed to multiple destructive processes: pipeline, landfill, oxidation

Even more, they live a regional marginalization. Communities are sent to more complex geographic locations.

Artisanal mining communities

ENVIRONMENTAL DISCRIMINATION = MULTIPLE EXPOSSURE

SCENARIOS
Domestic Exposure.

TANGIBLE
Noise,

INTANGIBLE
Alcoholism,

TRANSVE RSAL

Gender and Communities exposed to environmental Topographical generational problems generally live extremely near characteristics, violence, the problem: oil, mining, waste dumps, Chemicals: Mercury Prostitution, or even on these destructive processes. and cyanide, gases. Migration. Workforce Shackling, Workforce Exposure. Noise, At the same time, work is both, a Risks, protective and destructive factor, due to Chemicals. it provides economic resources, but it also creates health loss and even death: LABORAL CHAIN. Violence, Extortion. Community uprooting. CLASS GENDER ETHNICIT Y

Division. Falsely Constructed Exposure Inadequate Practices: Making community members responsible It seems a constructed exposure Storing chemicals for the situations of because in its discourse community inside the house, death and disease that they face . families apparently create this level of Not boiling water, expossure, for instance: about storing or not chemicals inside the house, not Not covering water covering water tanks. However, in tanks. practice they have no choices: recyclers

SOCIAL JUSTICE:

North-South relations are also a Subject-Object relation. Neo colonialism is expressed in a hidden international cooperation under a charity logic expressed in science and technology imports, humanitarian aid, clientelistic measures and infrastructure.

MULTINATIONALS impose hegemony and territorial domination, that objectifies people and communities. They assume a non asked paternalism that justify appropriations and abuses. We demand a Subject /Subject relationship. We repudiate this North-South charity relationship.

And the State????

in the new world order, states are a security service for CORPORATIONS.

There is a discourse of social and environmental friendly technologies. With this discourse States are encouraged to support extractivist projects. However, all the extractivist projects cause social an envrinmental negative impacts. It is not possible to grant health and welfare for communities surrounded by sick ecosystems.

Multinationals become owners of the granted territories. In that areas they replace State responsiblilties. Social rights are given as a compensation measures. With this, local economies are linked to the company. Companies are granted by the State to regulate, organise and restrict all the productive activities. Therefore, a neo colonial relationship is stabished. Automatically settlers have new masters. Next to cruel strategies of imposition such as militarization there are othres more subtle but not less perverse: closing of primary schools, the break of social and community laces, desorganisation of local economies, blackmailing, etc. THIS IS THE NEW GLOBAL (DIS) ORDER

To understand health from a social and environmental discourse implies analyze it from A SOCIALECOSYSTEM APPROACH. Health as an expression of territory must also study the structure of production, the reproductive structure and power relations.

If diseases are symptom s of individuality

health is the expression of territory

A sick socio-ecosystem implies human beings also sick It doesnt matter how many efforts can be done by governments, on health prevention, promotion or even integral primary health care

Primary health care has been usually limited to affect lifestyles, assuming that patients have a real chance to decide about their health. What are the real opportunities that communities, affected by oil, mining, landfills, have to improve their health by simply changing their individual and familiar practices? If all the water in the oil region of Ecuador is contaminated by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (rain, streams and groundwater) and 100% of the population drink this water, it has no sense a primary health care strategy... Is that our goal? ... Is it enough? Primary health care may be an accomplice with the system as far as all the responsibilities are placed in the patient. "Geography of Blame" ... It is urgent to move from the logic of promotion and prevention to enforce social and nature rights, just then we can really have health as a universal social right ...

MOON

AIR

ANIMALS

PEOPLE

HEALTH
WATER PLANTS

SOIL

SUN

LUNA

AIRE

ANIMALES

PERSONAS

HEALTH
AGUA PLANTAS

SUELO

SOL

EXTRACTIVISM = ILLNESS FOR ALL NOW

OIL Souths demands: Leave the oil under the soil.

MINING. Ecuador is not and wont be a big scale mining country.

You lack water because you have to much mining

Water is not for sell, is to defend

Resistance, criminalization and violence are the words that summarize the mining conflict in Ecuador

AGRIBUSINESS = ILLNESS FOR ALL NOW

No more agribusiness. Souths demand: enforce community farming

PESTICIDES AND GMOS = ILLNESS FOR ALL NOW

Pandemics of modernity: degenerative and autoimmune diseases are directly linked to food mutation and its increasing harmfulness.

WATER CRISIS = ILLNESS FOR ALL NOW

THE BIGGEST NONSENSE OF CAPITALISM: Water IS USED to transport and dispose waste. Then it is purified and sold as a commodity: A vicious circle of artificial scarcity.

LANDFILLS, DUMPS AND INCINERATORS = ILLNESS FOR ALL NOW.

CLIMATE CRISIS, GREEN CAPITALISM AND CLEAN DEVELOPMENT MECHANISM = ILLNESS FOR ALL NOW, Business for the north, nature as a commodity

We, people from the South, do not want more charity we demand Social and Environmental Justice.

Indigenous peoples define: "Health is dignity. Behind all the diseases there is always a source of humiliation" (Declaration of Moiss GandhiMexico)