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. 

Members voices: Why physiotherapists are joining the EPA and what they are already thinking and doing about environmental physiotherapy

The Environmental Physiotherapy Assocation (EPA) continues to grow by the day. Members are pouring in from all corners of the world and all areas of our profession, including students, teachers, clinicians, researchers and professional representatives, and all of them...

Roots and Relations – Garden to Connect, Rwanda

What is the relation between growing plants, reused plastic pipes and physiotherapy? I have often been asked this, since I have engaged in urban gardening in Rwanda and Denmark. My personal path to connect the dots contains two meetings and an opportunity, which I...

What can physiotherapists learn from COVID-19 about the importance of accessing outdoor spaces?

For many of us, COVID-19 has meant restrictions on what we do and where we go. These restrictions may include lockdowns, which prevent us from leaving our homes, through to supervised quarantine, often in hotels. These restrictions have been criticised because of the...

Earth Hour 2020 – Raise your voice for nature

Having started in march 2007 in Sydney, Australia, Earth Hour has become one of the world's largest grassroots movements for the environment. And though we find ourselves in a peculiar moment in human history amidst the COVID-19 crisis, which puts a particular spin on...

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

4 + 5 =