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. 

Blurring the Boundaries: Complex Adaptive Systems, Sense of Self, and Our Collective Evolution

At the first-ever Environmental Physiotherapy Festival 2023 I held a presentation beginning with a brief introduction on complex adaptive systems- a unifying area of study that encompasses information, evolution, neuroscience, and systems theories to shed light on an...

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...

New Year, New Possibilities for Environmental Physiotherapy

The beginning of 2025 marks the middle of the sixth year of the revolution that is environmental physiotherapy, with no signs of slowing down for the Environmental Physiotherapy Association.  Next to countless other activities and lots of further collaboration and...

Environmental Physiotherapy at APASC25 in Adelaide, 23-25 October

Thanks to the Australian Physiotherapy Association Occupational Health group, Environmental physiotherapy will be featured prominently at the upcoming APA Scientific Congress 2025 in Adelaide from 23- 25 October. On Wednesday 22 October we will run a pre-conference...

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