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. 

An Ecological-Enactive Approach to Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: Expanding Horizons

Chronic musculoskeletal pain presents a significant challenge for healthcare professionals and patients alike. Traditional approaches, often rooted in the biomedical model, have focused on locating pain within damaged tissues and repairing the “broken” body. While...

Physiotherapy and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration?

Though the official launch is scheduled for World Environment Day on 5 June 2021, this year marks the beginning of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. This United Nations effort is based on the recognition that 'there has never been a more urgent need to restore...

What If They Fixed It? Part 2: Seeds of Tomorrow

A fictional, but not impossible, story based on a future that could be if current science and research-backed solutions to climate change were implemented by those in power. August 2030. The looming threat of a 26 billion euro fine snapped the Irish Government into...

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...

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