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)

About

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

Blog

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

Join

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

Resources

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

The struggle for the decolonisation of both people and nature

In Aotearoa New Zealand (hereafter Aotearoa), upon the meeting of strangers with Māori (the Indigenous people of Aotearoa), oftentimes you’ll hear the question “Ko wai koe?”, meaning “Who are you?”. The word ‘wai’ also translates to mean ‘water’. Thus for Māori, the...

Nature-based interventions for physical health conditions: A systematic review and meta-analysis

On January 25, 2023, my PhD supervisor sat me down and asked me to visualise what I would like to see created to support the use of nature-based interventions (NBIs) in healthcare. The image was clear: I wanted to see a handbook of NBIs, outlining different NBIs, the...

Outdoor environments for health and wellbeing

Unicare Bakke is a rehabilitation centre that is beautifully located on the countryside, south of Halden in Norway. I started working there as a physiotherapist in 2000 and over the years I recognized that we didn´t use the beautiful outdoors and surroundings as much...

Books that have guided my transformative change towards planetary justice

I recently chatted with a colleague about books that have changed our lives (1). It was literally a 2-minute conversation, but the idea of the impact of books still lingers in my mind. Counterintuitively, the readings that have had the most positive impact on my...

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

2 + 6 =