RESEARCH
POPULATION AND GLOBAL HEALTH

Planetary Health

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  • Journal Article
  • 2023

An emergent planetary health law

by Eric C. Ip
in International & Comparative Law Quarterly

The health of the planet and its life forms are under threat from anthropogenic climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, and the extreme weather events, heatwaves and wildfires that accompany them. The burgeoning field of planetary health studies the interplay between humanity and the Earth’s biosphere and ecosystems on which human health depends. Scholarship on law from a planetary health vantage point remains scarce. This article fills this gap by delineating the conceptual building blocks of a planetary health law, which, in its latent form, is dispersed across various hard and soft sources of international environmental law and global health law that converge on the right to a healthy environment, and, to a lesser extent, rights of nature emerging in various domestic jurisdictions. It elucidates how the fragmented regimes of international environmental and global health law could be developed in more coherent ways, driven by an overarching concern for the integrity of the planetary foundations of life.

Planetary health is a nascent field of scientific research that is related to but different from global health. It recognises that human health is critically shaped by the biophysical and ecological systems of the planet Earth, which in turn are influenced by human activities in ways too important to be neglected during the present Anthropocene epoch. CMEL’s research in this emerging area seeks to understand and reform the legal structures within which human impacts on the natural systems of our planet affect human health and civilisation. Additionally, we seek to chart the human rights implications of legal responses to planetary events like global climate change, zoonotic diseases, transborder fire emissions, and so on.

More information is available on the personal profile pages of our Prof Eric C. Ip and Prof Daisy Cheung.

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  • Journal Article
  • 2023

From the right to a healthy planet to the planetary right to health

by Eric C. Ip
in The Lancet Planetary Health

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  • Journal Article
  • 2023

Harnessing legal structures of virtue for planetary health

by Eric C. Ip
in Journal of Medical Ethics 

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  • Journal Article
  • 2022

Mapping the legal foundations of planetary mental health

by Daisy Cheung & Eric C. Ip
in Global Mental Health

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  • Journal Article
  • 2021

The constitutional determinants of planetary health

by Eric C. Ip
in The Lancet Planetary Health

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