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. 

PhysioHike – Break free and just be!

We, Thies Bundtzen (GER), Maud Weterings (NL) and Arthur Desachy (FR) have all recently finished our physiotherapy studies. The idea for this event has evolved out of the PhysioCouch Community, which inspired us with international events just like 2019 in Czech...

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...

Launching the Environmental Physiotherapy Association (EPA)

Physiotherapy has needed an international association dedicated to the environment for some time, and not only because we now have social media that allows us to connect across the globe, but because life on our planet is imperilled. The climate crisis now facing us...

Environmental physiotherapy education at the In Beta Unconference 2020

In Beta is a virtual community of physiotherapy educators who experiment with different approaches to teaching and learning, make podcasts, publish a newsletter, share project ideas and arrange Unconferences. In Beta’s name reflects the fact that we are always in a...

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