The European Union and Planetary Health Politics

In 2015 the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission defined planetary health as built on an ecological model that integrates the material, biological, social, and cultural aspects of public health and accepts the complexity and non-linearity of the dynamics of natural systems. The zoonotic COVID-19 pandemic hastened this awaking to the symbiotic nature of planetary health politics (PHP), with the EU and UNEP formally joining forces to address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity. The paper examines the slow realisation of the impact of the planetary organic crisis of PHP within the EU in three steps. First, the paper examines the extent to which EU approaches to PHP are ecocentric in the primacy given to the entirety of the planet rather than an egocentric emphasis on those parts of the environment that provide services for humans. Second, the looks at the way in which the EU’s PHP’s are symbiotic in recognising the mutual co-dependency between different individuals or groups of species or organisms. Third, the paper analyses the holistic aspect of the EU’s PHP’s, meaning the way in which the symbiotic parts of the planet co-constitute each other in terms of the analytical whole.