gsgs exam 3

convergence

“converge” on an equal per person right to emit

contraction

“contract” to get approximately 1 tonne of co2 per person

anthropocene

the idea that we have moved into a new geological epoch driven by human activity (industrialization, nuclear tests, urbanization) tat is now the dominant force impacting climate and the environment.

critiques of the anthropocene

1. which humans? (responsibility)

2. what about humans (power relations and extraction v human nature)

3. why only humans (reiterate humans vs nature dualism)

Planetary Boundaries

includes climate change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, and land-system change. threatened by powerful economic actors.

planetary challenges

• running out of capacity for greenhouse gases

• rapid biodiversity loss (6th mass extinction)

• stratospheric ozone depletion

• oceanic degradation and acidification

• crises in the biogeochemical nitrogen and phosphorus cycles

• other resource input constraints

• chemical pollution

• freshwater adulteration and evaporation

• shortages of arable land

big question of the article

• what mechanisms work the best/should be pursued for the environmental challenges?

2 main approaches to environmental challenges

1. technomanagerial + market approaches

2. state controls guided by civil society organizations

ecological modernization

reliance on technological innovations, esciences and the management of externalities aimed at improving environmental outcomes in a rational manner

technomanagerial + market approach

hinges on “internalization of externalities” within a modernizing paradigm.

Lutzenburger:

if we want to understand the foundational reasons we see the environmental issues we do, there is a useful explanatory framework that looks at the mechanisms of capitalism (primitive accumulation) and crisis

crisis

what do we do when there’s no place to put money to grow

3 modes of capitalist crisis displacement

1. globalization’s ability to shift problems around spatially, without actually solving them;

2. financialization’s capacity to stall problems temporally, by generating credit based techniques- including securitization of toxic loans and commodified nature- that permit the purchase of products today at the expense of future debts and defaults when the upside down pyramid topples;

3. imperialism’s compulsion to steal from weaker territories via extra-economic extractive systems variously termed “articulations of modes of production,” “uneven and combined development,” the “shock doctrine” and accumulation by dispossession.

tech fix strategies

1. dirty “clean energy” (nuclear, fracking, biofuels”

2. carbon capture and storage

3. geoengineering

what reasons did the author cite for why the tech fix strategies were “false” solutions

• violate the precautionary principle

• create land-grab pressure

• have excessive capital costs

• require increased energy

• are unproven in technological terms

• are many years from implementation

main critiques of carbon tradings

• inventing a property right to pollute, privatizing air

• doesn’t address the full impact of GHGs

• corporations and the world bank are historically responsible for fossil fuel financing, making them likely to engage in corruption to attract money through this process

• many offsetting projects have bad impacts on local communities and ecologies.

• price of carbon is unpredictable

• it encourages small shifts and distracts from the radical changes needed

• market solutions to market failure rarely make sense or are effective

Stiglitz-Stern on Carbon Pricing

the capital required to transition to low-carbon futures often faces large uncertainties, political risks, illiquid assets, and solid returns in the long term only. investors lack knowledge and info necessary to assess the quality of innovative, low-carbon projects

heat impacts on health

chronic/acute heat harms, productivity loss, difficulty of measurement

heat impacts on migration

temp shocks drive mobility patters beyond rainfall/sea level paradigms, rural-urban and urban-urban flows.

heat impact on work and decent work

lost work hours, uneven burdens on informal workers in the global south from “thermal inequity” to structurally produced exposure.

cambodia example

• high climate vulnerability, droughts and heat linked to reduced agricultural productivity

• migration landscape: high informality, brick sector as a last resort drawing in debt-burdened farmers

• bonded labor dynamics in brick kilns: seasonality, low wages, and health hazards

• precarity (hyper insecurity on job area)

thermal inequality

• systematic, stratified differences in exposure and vulnerability to heat that are produced and reproduced by labor regimes, social hierarchies, and migration systems.

durable inequality

socal mechanism that lock categorical inequalities in place across time and space.

food systems

• integrated networks in which human actors are shaped by and shape ecological processes. they are co constituted by ecological components (land, water, climate, seeds, ecosystems) and social components (labor, markets, policies, cultural norms, technologies).

how elements of food systems interact

• producing material outcomes like food availability, nutrition, and social outcomes like inequality, access, and vulnerability.

relations of power that shape food systems

• who owns land and controls resources?

• who has access to markets or subsidies?

• whose labor is valued or marginalized?

• also shaped by cultural practices, dietary preferences and traditions, and local ecological knowledge.

urban metabolism

• a continuous flow of inputs and outputs- cities aren’t self contained ecosystems but nodes with expansive socioecological networks, often displacing environmental burden onto rural or peripheral regions.

ecologies of cities (rock outcroppings)

• land transformation and biodiversity loss

• significant contributors to climate change

• alteration of the hydrological cycle through impermeable surfaces, pollution, and increased runoff

heat island effect

where built surfaces such as concrete and asphalt absorb and retain heat, leading to higher urban temps, increased energy demand for cooling, and elevated health risks.

how do cities reshape food systems?

• dependence on long distance supply chains

• high levels of food waste

• demand for resource intensive agricultural production

peri-urban areas

• transitional zones at the edges of cities where urban and rural characteristics intermingle.

• dynamic interface shaped by ongoing processes of urban expansion, economic change, and environmental transformation.

SWANA (sw asia and n. africa) Context of climate change

• extreme water scarcity (in some place below global averages)

• limited arable land (less than 5% in some countries)

• high dependence on food imports (greater than 50% in many countries)

• climate vulnerability: heat, drought, declining yields

• food insecurity: not just a production issue but also a political and economic one.

advantages of urban and peri-urban agriculture

1. food security: access to fresh food, reduced dependence on imports, crisis resilience.

2. economic benefits: income generation, self employment, opportunities for marginalized groups

3. environmental benefits: reduced food miles and emissions, air quality, urban cooling, water recycling, resource efficiency

4. social benefits: community building

urban and peri-urban agriculture limitations

1. land and resource constraints

2. policy and government gaps

3. technical and economic barriers (limited access to tech and infrastructure)

4. institutional instability

health definition

a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity

public health definition

the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical health and efficiency through

meaning of unpacking the social

moving beyond treating social factors as fixed, measurable variables and instead understanding them as dynamic processes shaped by relationships, history, and power.

key ideas from the film Disruption

• urgency of climate action

• role of economic incentives

• influence of the fossil fuel industry on politics

what did the film disruption highlight

• strategies like lobbying, legislation, and social movements

• importance of interpersonal communication in driving change

humanitarian obligation perspective (hamilton)

• argues that wealthier countries have a moral responsibility to address global inequalities, including climate change and health disparities.

• perspective tied to debates about fairness, historical responsibility, and global justice

nonperformatives

• statements or initiatives that appear to create change but don’t result in meaningful action

• reinforce systems they claim to challenge by producing the appearance of progress without altering underlying conditions.

problem closure

• refers to the way problems are defined in narrow ways that shape what counts as a legit solution while excluding other possibilities.

• proposed solutions reinfroce framing rather than question it.

public health + problem closure/nonperformatives

• discussion of food access- absence of grocery stores and healthy food can obscure deeper structural conditions like racial segregation and housing inequality.

why has expanding the definition of pandemic beyond infections diseases become controversial in global health?

• has expanded to include noncommunicable diseases like obesity, diabetes, cancer, and tobacco use

• stretches a concept traditionally reserved for infectious diseases to serve broader political goals. reframed to generate urgency surrounding these problems

• can blur distinction and raise questions about global health priorities.

upstream approaches in PH

• focus on structural root causes of health outcomes such as poverty, housing, and policy systems.

• addresses inequality at the source but can oversimplify causal relationships into linear models when they’re more complex than that.

downstream approaches in PH

• focus on treating consequences, like disease management and individual behavior change.

• may ignore systemic causes and place responsibility on individuals rather than institutions or broader social conditions

How does Hamilton Article reflect political economy and global inequality?

• shows how climate change is deeply shaped by global capitalism, shifting power relations, and unequal responsibilities between countries.

• China complicates the usual model through its rapid industrialization and integration into the global capitalist system, challenging the traditional divide of core/periphery.

• shows that climate change isn’t just environmental but also political and economic- states prioritize growth on the world stage over climate protection, often at the expense of weaker states.

• global inequality very persistent- small countries marginalized in negotiations despite their large risk.

material-semiotic indeterminancy

• material realities like health or climate impacts and the meanings we assign to them are constantly interacting and cannot be fully separated or fixed.

• causes and effects are not linear or stable but emerge through relationships and context- challenges simplification.

Significance of the Al-Khalifa case study

• shows how local practices, economic pressures, and social relationships shape how people manage resources like water and food.

• highlights that solutions must reflect lived realities.

top down approaches

• rely on experts, govts, and institutions to design and implement solutions

• can overlook lived realities

bottom up approaches

• emphasize community knowledge and local participation

• face challenges in scale and resources

frequency in pandemics

• how often new cases of a disease occur in a population

• usually measured through incidence rates that compare new cases to the population at risk over a set time period.

geography in pandemics

• refers to how widely the disease spreads, with pandemics defined as epidemics that extend across multiple world regions or continents at the same time rather than being contained somewhere.

severity in pandemics

• overall impact of disease, including levels of illness, long term disability, and death

• difficult to define because of how nebulous diseases are and the impact of public perception

what do frequency geography and severity define for diseases?

• if they are classified as pandemics and influence how societies understand and respond to them.

types of climate uncertainty (Hamilton)

• ecological uncertainty

• epistemic uncertainty

• political economic uncertainty

ecological uncertainty

• anxiety about what will happen to the environment

epistemic uncertainty

• uncertainty about what we know and whose knowledge counts

political-economic uncertainty

• uncertainty about how power and resources shape impacts and response.

medical care vs public health

• individual patient vs population

• identification of disease in an individual vs identification of patterns and causes of disease across populations

• direct intervention on individual vs large scale interventions that are often preventative or educational

• cure or manage illness in individual vs preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health at the population level.

10 great public health achievements

1. vaccination

2. motor vehicle safety

3. safer workplaces

4. control of infectious diseases

5. decline in deaths from coronary heart disease and stroke

6. safer and healthier foods

7. healthier mothers and babies

8. family planning

9. fluoridation of drinking water

10. recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard

big public health challenges

1. climate change

2. antimicrobial resistance

3. infectious diseases with pandemic potential

4. fragile, conflict affected vulnerable settings

5. noncommunicable diseases

3 core functions of public health

1. protection

2. prevention

3. promotion

examples of protection in public health

• workplace safety + environment regulation

examples of prevention in public health

• screening

• vaccination

examples of promotion in public health

• addressing determinants

• promoting healthy behaviors

epidemiology

• the study of the distributions and determinants of disease in populations

• used to identify risk factors for disease and other health issues

biostatistics

• rates and numbers: mortality and morbidity, for example

social and behavioral sciences

• the social determinants of health, how behaviors affect health

• the factors affecting health and behavior occur at multiple levels; behavior influences and is influenced by the social environments in which it occurs.

environmental health science

• theory and practice of assessing, correcting, controlling, and preventing factors in the environment that can potentially affect adversely the health of present and future generations

• looks at hazards like radiation, contaminants, water/air quality, and both manmade and natural disasters

health policy and management

• policies and law that affect public health

• study the role of the medical care system in public health- measure quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of it

why is public health a global challenge?

• health risks do not respect political borders

• global health inequalities are structurally produced

• interventions themselves are politically and ethically contested.

market based/neoliberal health perspective

• health improvements should emerge through economic development and market mechanisms.

national sovereignty perspective

• countries shouldn’t interfere in the internal affairs of others.

postcolonial/structural critique perspective

• wealthy countries are historically responsible for current inequalities and thus bear reparative obligations

significance of chicken farm initiative

• chickens provide ongoing food and are also a source of economic value

• millions of chickens distributed in Ghana and Mozambique

• in reality, the chicken farmers may not have the resources to make chicken farming profitable and correct.

“irrationality” in antimicrobial resistance and farming

• farmers framed as lacking knowledge or behaving incorrectly

• irrationality as a category that’s politically and socially collect