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. 

Embedding Climate Change in the Physiotherapy Curriculum: Why Aren’t We Acting?

If we know that climate change is real—and that it represents the greatest threat to health, affecting every person on the planet—why is there still no urgency to modify, change, and adapt physiotherapy curricula? If planetary health truly matters in health education,...

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...

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...

Climate change, biodiversity and sustainability discussed at the Australian national physiotherapy conference

Between the dates of the October 6-8 2023, Brisbane, Australia became home of the Australian Physiotherapy Association’s national conference, IGNITE 2023. I was fortunate enough to attend this conference and was excited and inspired by the keynote presentation titled,...

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