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Work and Nature: Collective Health Challenges Towards the Sustainable Development Goals After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Received: 4 January 2021     Accepted: 20 February 2021     Published: 9 March 2021
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Abstract

Work is a central concept to understand social metabolism. Human work is the process that getting the social metabolism that creates those goods necessary for to life. The industrial revolution laid the foundation for an insurmountable contradiction between capitalism and environmental sustainability. The advance of market power over the use of natural resources to sustain globalized lifestyles is responsible for various manifestations of the ecological crisis. As in the rest of the world, in Latin America this type of economic growth has a negative impact on ecosystems in general and on biodiversity in particular. A productive structure that is extractive and intensive of natural resources that not only show its unsustainability, but also its incapability to produce development and well-being. The current COVID-19 pandemic highlights the economic system's vulnerabilities on an unsuspected scale. The SDG issued in 2015, acknowledges the ecological crisis and recognition the impossibility of finding global governance mechanisms with regulatory capacity. The COVID-19 pandemic called into question the economic paradigm perspective on which some of the SDG are based: economic growth and globalization. It is the field of health where the impact of COVID-19 pushes SDG further away. The public health response is limited in the face of the impacts of an epidemic that strikes at the SDG's multiple dimensions. The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is profound. The SDG are not exempt from that perspective, if they manage to prove themselves as guiding principles for global governance. We argue that the opportunity to find structural solutions with long-term horizons will rise from radical changes in the ways we produce, distribute and consume. Collective health could contribute to the redefinition of the SDG if it faces the challenge of a public health that takes up ecosocial approaches by redefining the social uses of work and nature. The first condition to initiate those structural changes is a progressive de-commodification of life. The second fundamental condition for sustainable welfare is the democratization of social life. Finally, collective health can contribute to redefine the SDG if faces the challenge of a public health that takes up eco-social approaches.

Published in Journal of Health and Environmental Research (Volume 7, Issue 1)

This article belongs to the Special Issue Health and the Environment as a Resource for the Reduction of Social Inequalities in Argentina

DOI 10.11648/j.jher.20210701.19
Page(s) 49-57
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Collective Health, Environmental Health, Occupational Health, SDG, COVID-19

References
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[2] Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), Building a new future: a transformative recovery with equality and sustainability (LC/SES. 38/3-P/Rev. 1), Santiago, 2020.
[3] Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen, and John R. McNeill "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Today Unquestionable The Great Forces of Nature?" AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 36 (8), 614-621, (December 1, 2007). https://doi.org/10.1579/0044-7447(2007)36[614:TAAHNOíritu2.0.CO;2.
[4] Toledo VM, González de Molina M. (2007) Social metabolism. In Garrido F, González Molina M, Serrano JL and Solana JL (Eds.) The ecological paradigm in the social sciences. Barcelona: Icaria.
[5] Braverman H. Reading 5. Work and labor force (Page 129-39). In: Toharia L (Comp.). The labor market: theories and applications. Selected readings. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2005.
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[12] Rob Wallace "The agri-food business would put millions of lives at risk." Interview with Rob Wallace 03/28/2020 Source: Marx21, March 11, 2020, https://www.marx21.de/coronavirus-agribusiness-would-risk-millions-of-deaths/.
[13] Navarro V. The Consequences of Neoliberalism in the Current Pandemic International Journal of Health Services 2020, Vol. 50 (3) 271–275 DOI: 10.1177/0020731420925449.
[14] FMI World Economic Outlook, April 2020: The Great Lockdown April 2020 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/04/14/weo-april-2020.
[15] Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Health and the economy: a necessary convergence to face COVID-19 and return to the path towards sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean. July 30, 2020.
[16] ONU https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/es/poverty/.
[17] Naiddo R, Fisher B. Reset Sustainable Development Goals for a pandemic world. Nature 583, 198-201 (2020) doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01999-x 6 de julio 2020.
[18] ECLAC Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), Reconstruction and transformation with equality and sustainability in Latin America and the Caribbean (LC/SES. 38/11), Santiago, 2020.
[19] Marmot M, Allen J. J Epidemiol Community Health September 2020 Vol 74 No 9.
[20] A. V. Diez Roux Population Health in the Time of COVID-19: Confirmations and Revelations The Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 00, No. 0, 2020 (Pages 1-12).
[21] Joan Benach We Must Take Advantage of This Pandemic to Make a Radical Social Change: The Coronavirus as a Global Health, Inequality, and Eco-Social Problem. International Journal of Health Services DOI: 10.1177/0020731420946594.
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[27] Disha Shetty Rich Countries Reserve Billions of Covid-19 Vaccine Doses Even Before There Is One. Forbes 4 november 2020 https://www.forbes.com/sites/dishashetty/2020/11/04/rich-countries-reserve-billions-of-covid-19-vaccine-doses-even-before-there-is-one/?sh=2b0ddd3b4e17.
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Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Marcelo Amable, Rocio Gonzalez Francese, Cecilia Schneider. (2021). Work and Nature: Collective Health Challenges Towards the Sustainable Development Goals After the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Health and Environmental Research, 7(1), 49-57. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jher.20210701.19

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    ACS Style

    Marcelo Amable; Rocio Gonzalez Francese; Cecilia Schneider. Work and Nature: Collective Health Challenges Towards the Sustainable Development Goals After the COVID-19 Pandemic. J. Health Environ. Res. 2021, 7(1), 49-57. doi: 10.11648/j.jher.20210701.19

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    AMA Style

    Marcelo Amable, Rocio Gonzalez Francese, Cecilia Schneider. Work and Nature: Collective Health Challenges Towards the Sustainable Development Goals After the COVID-19 Pandemic. J Health Environ Res. 2021;7(1):49-57. doi: 10.11648/j.jher.20210701.19

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  • @article{10.11648/j.jher.20210701.19,
      author = {Marcelo Amable and Rocio Gonzalez Francese and Cecilia Schneider},
      title = {Work and Nature: Collective Health Challenges Towards the Sustainable Development Goals After the COVID-19 Pandemic},
      journal = {Journal of Health and Environmental Research},
      volume = {7},
      number = {1},
      pages = {49-57},
      doi = {10.11648/j.jher.20210701.19},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jher.20210701.19},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.jher.20210701.19},
      abstract = {Work is a central concept to understand social metabolism. Human work is the process that getting the social metabolism that creates those goods necessary for to life. The industrial revolution laid the foundation for an insurmountable contradiction between capitalism and environmental sustainability. The advance of market power over the use of natural resources to sustain globalized lifestyles is responsible for various manifestations of the ecological crisis. As in the rest of the world, in Latin America this type of economic growth has a negative impact on ecosystems in general and on biodiversity in particular. A productive structure that is extractive and intensive of natural resources that not only show its unsustainability, but also its incapability to produce development and well-being. The current COVID-19 pandemic highlights the economic system's vulnerabilities on an unsuspected scale. The SDG issued in 2015, acknowledges the ecological crisis and recognition the impossibility of finding global governance mechanisms with regulatory capacity. The COVID-19 pandemic called into question the economic paradigm perspective on which some of the SDG are based: economic growth and globalization. It is the field of health where the impact of COVID-19 pushes SDG further away. The public health response is limited in the face of the impacts of an epidemic that strikes at the SDG's multiple dimensions. The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is profound. The SDG are not exempt from that perspective, if they manage to prove themselves as guiding principles for global governance. We argue that the opportunity to find structural solutions with long-term horizons will rise from radical changes in the ways we produce, distribute and consume. Collective health could contribute to the redefinition of the SDG if it faces the challenge of a public health that takes up ecosocial approaches by redefining the social uses of work and nature. The first condition to initiate those structural changes is a progressive de-commodification of life. The second fundamental condition for sustainable welfare is the democratization of social life. Finally, collective health can contribute to redefine the SDG if faces the challenge of a public health that takes up eco-social approaches.},
     year = {2021}
    }
    

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Author Information
  • Study Group About Work and Environmental Health, Department of Environment and Tourism, National University of Avellaneda, Avellaneda City, Argentina

  • Study Group About Work and Environmental Health, Department of Environment and Tourism, National University of Avellaneda, Avellaneda City, Argentina

  • Department of Social Sciences, National University of Avellaneda, Avellaneda City, Argentina

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