Managing and mitigating future public health risks: Planetary boundaries, global catastrophic risk, and inclusive wealth.

Abstract

There are two separate conceptualizations for assessing existential risks: Planetary Boundaries (PBs) and global catastrophic risks (GCRs). While these concepts are similar in principle, their underpinning literatures tend not to engage with each other. Research related to these concepts has tended to be siloed in terms of the study of specific threats and also in terms of how these are assumed to materialize; PBs attribute global catastrophes to slow-moving and potentially irreversible global changes, while GCRs focuses on cataclysmic short-term events. We argue that there is a need for a more unified approach to managing global long-term risks, which recognizes the complex and confounded nature of the interactions between PBs and GCRs. We highlight where the PB and GCR concepts overlap and outline these complexities using an example of public health, namely, pandemics and food insecurity. We also present an existing indicator that we argue can be used for monitoring and managing risk. We argue for greater emphasis on national and global ''inclusive wealth'' as a way to measure economic activity and thus to monitor and mitigate the unintended consequences of economic activity. In sum, we call for a holistic approach to stewardship aimed at preserving the integrity of natural capital in the face of a broad range of global risks and their respective regional or global manifestations.