Provocation Panel

Day 1: Thursday, 12 September

Environmental change, such as biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change, is expected to have profound implications for human health and well-being worldwide, resulting in increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of food systems, increases in zoonoses and food, water and vector-borne diseases and declining mental health. However, these impacts will be felt unequally, with certain groups at greater risk from these negative health outcomes, such as the elderly or young, pregnant women and socio-economically disadvantaged. This provocation panel will present the challenge of addressing environmental change through the lens of justice and equity. It will blur the boundaries between disciplinary silos, drawing on knowledge from across the natural, social, and medical sciences -- arguing that to ensure the success of international agreements and programmes such as the SDGs or the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, we must account for intersectionality as well as indigenous and local knowledge (ILK). We will make the argument that new and novel research and policy approaches to managing environmental change must take into consideration the intersectionality to ensure that they minimise and reduce inequalities rather than exacerbate them.