• Energy Research

The “Earthrise” photograph, taken on the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, became one of the most significant images of the 20th Century. It triggered a profound shift in environmental awareness and the potential for human unity—inspiring the first Earth Day in 1970. Taking inspiration from these events 50 years later, we initiated Project Earthrise at our 2020 annual conference of inVIVO Planetary Health. This builds on the emergent concept of planetary health, which provides a shared narrative to integrate rich and diverse approaches from all aspects of society towards shared solutions to global challenges. The acute catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn greater attention to many other interconnected global health, environmental, social, spiritual, and economic problems that have been underappreciated or neglected for decades. This is accelerating opportunities for greater collaborative action, as many groups now focus on the necessity of a “Great Transition”. While ambitious integrative efforts have never been more important, it is imperative to apply these with mutualistic value systems as a compass, as we seek to make wiser choices. Project Earthrise is our contribution to this important process. This underscores the imperative for creative ecological solutions to challenges in all systems, on all scales with advancing global urbanization in the digital age—for personal, environmental, economic and societal health alike. At the same time, our agenda seeks to equally consider our social and spiritual ecology as it does natural ecology. Revisiting the inspiration of “Earthrise”, we welcome diverse perspectives from across all dimensions of the arts and the sciences, to explore novel solutions and new normative values. Building on academic rigor, we seek to place greater value on imagination, kindness and mutualism as we address our greatest challenges, for the health of people, places and planet.

inVIVO Planetary Health (inVIVO) is a progressive scientific movement providing evidence, advocacy, and inspiration to align the interests and vitality of people, place, and planet. Our goal is to transform personal and planetary health through awareness, attitudes, and actions, and a deeper understanding of how all systems are interconnected and interdependent. Here, we present the abstracts and proceedings of our 8th annual conference, held in Detroit, Michigan in May 2019, themed “From Challenges, to Opportunities”. Our far-ranging discussions addressed the complex interdependent ecological challenges of advancing global urbanization, including the biopsychosocial interactions in our living environment on physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing, together with the wider community and societal factors that govern these. We had a strong solutions focus, with diverse strategies spanning from urban-greening and renewal, nature-relatedness, nutritional ecology, planetary diets, and microbiome rewilding, through to initiatives for promoting resilience, positive emotional assets, traditional cultural narratives, creativity, art projects for personal and community health, and exploring ways of positively shifting mindsets and value systems. Our cross-sectoral agenda underscored the importance and global impact of local initiatives everywhere by contributing to new normative values as part of a global interconnected grass-roots movement for planetary health.

Mental health and well-being are consistently influenced—directly or indirectly—by multiple environmental exposures. In this review, we have attempted to address some of the most common exposures of the biophysical environment, with a goal of demonstrating how those factors interact with central structures and functions of the brain and thus influence the neurobiology of depression. We emphasize biochemical mechanisms, observational evidence, and areas for future research. Finally, we include aspects of contextual environments—city living, nature, natural disasters, and climate change—and call for improved integration of environmental issues in public health science, policies, and activities. This integration is necessary for reducing the global pandemic of depression.

Nature-based solutions including urban forests and wetlands can help communities cope better with climate change and other environmental stressors by enhancing social-ecological resilience. Natural ecosystems, settings, elements and affordances can also help individuals become more personally resilient to a variety of stressors, although the mechanisms underpinning individual-level nature-based resilience, and their relations to social-ecological resilience, are not well articulated. We propose 'nature-based biopsychosocial resilience theory' (NBRT) to address these gaps. Our framework begins by suggesting that individual-level resilience can refer to both: a) a person's set of adaptive resources; and b) the processes by which these resources are deployed. Drawing on existing nature-health perspectives, we argue that nature contact can support individuals build and maintain biological, psychological, and social (i.e. biopsychosocial) resilience-related resources. Together with nature-based social-ecological resilience, these biopsychosocial resilience resources can: i) reduce the risk of various stressors (preventive resilience); ii) enhance adaptive reactions to stressful circumstances (response resilience), and/or iii) facilitate more rapid and/or complete recovery from stress (recovery resilience). Reference to these three resilience processes supports integration across more familiar pathways involving harm reduction, capacity building, and restoration. Evidence in support of the theory, potential interventions to promote nature-based biopsychosocial resilience, and issues that require further consideration are discussed.

The global disease burden resulting from climate change is likely to be substantial and will put further strain on public health systems that are already struggling to cope with demand. An up- stream solution, that of preventing climate change and associated adverse health effects, is a promising approach, which would create win-win-situations where both the environment and human health benefit. One such solution would be to apply methods of behaviour change to prompt pro-environmentalism, which in turn benefits health and wellbeing.Based on evidence from the behavioural sciences, we suggest that, like many social behaviours, pro- environmental behaviour can be automatically induced by internal or external stimuli. A potential trigger for such automatic pro-environmental behaviour would be natural environments themselves. Previous research has demonstrated that natural environments evoke specific psychological and physiological reactions, as demonstrated by self-reports, epidemiological studies, brain imaging techniques, and various biomarkers. This suggests that exposure to natural environments could have automatic behavioural effects, potentially in a pro-environmental direction, mediated by physiological reactions. Providing access and fostering exposure to natural environments could then serve as a public health tool, together with other measures, by mitigating climate change and achieving sustainable health in sustainable ecosystems. However, before such actions are implemented basic research is required to elucidate the mechanisms involved, and applied investigations are needed to explore real world impacts and effect magnitudes. As environmental research is still not sufficiently integrated within medical or public health studies there is an urgent need to promote interdisciplinary methods and investigations in this critical field. Health risks posed by anthropogenic climate change are large, unevenly distributed, and unpredictable. To ameliorate negative impacts, pro-environmental behaviours should be fostered. Potentially this could be achieved automatically through exposure to favourable natural environments, with an opportunity for cost-efficient nature-based solutions that provide benefits for both the environment and public health.