The health of our environment, the ecological system we live in and are intimately connected to every element of is a direct support for our physical health.

Without well-nourished soil, our food lacks nutritional value (vitamins and minerals) and does not support individual physical and mental health.

When we overproduce and overextract from our environment, it suffers and we suffer individually as a result. In turn, when we take care of soil health, air health and water health, practicing permaculture, regenerative agriculture, degrowth and circular economy we support the well-being of individuals and societies.

The ultimate responsibility that we have is to realign our systems of governance with social and ecological imperatives so that humans can coexist with natural systems while we repair what we can and adapt to what is essentially irreparable on human time scales. ¹

From a general human perspective, the natural world is our “environment”, but our environment comprises a multitude of beings (seen and unseen by us), who are alive and many are also sentient. We are a part of their environment, and they are a part of ours. Environmental health therefore includes the physical and mental health of all nonhuman beings. This is of great importance to these beings and should therefore be important to human beings on an ethical level as well as on the level of ensuring our own physical health.