Planetary Boundaries and Planetary Health

Planetary Boundaries and Planetary Health 1
PLANETARY BOUNDARIES AND PLANETARY HEALTH
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Planetary Boundaries and Planetary Health 2
Introduction.
Planetary boundaries refer to a concept that involves processes of the earth system
which possess environmental borders. Going beyond some limits of the planetary boundaries
is accompanied by the catastrophic occurrence as this may bring about a nonlinear and
unbalanced environmental change. The contributing factors driving the changes in the
planetary boundaries are in many cases human activities especially the industrialization
processes. Planetary boundaries constitute of nine components; climate change, loss of
biodiversity, ocean acidification, land-system change, nitrogen and phosphorus flow to the
biosphere and oceans, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, atmospheric aerosol loading
and stratospheric ozone depletion (Steffen et al., 2015). Planetary health, on the other hand,
involves the characterisation of human health impacts that result from the disruption of the
natural systems within the earth. The changes that occur to the natural life support systems
due to human activities have an impact on human health in which they stimulate vulnerability
of the humans to current and future health dangers (Myers, 2017). This work aims at
discussing how each of the planetary boundaries affects the public human health and the
solutions that can be applied to lower the adverse effects caused by human interference with
these planetary borders.
Planetary boundaries’ functioning and their direct and indirect effects on human health
Stratospheric ozone depletion: the stratospheric ozone layer is an atmospheric layer
that helps in the filtration of the ultraviolet radiations from the sun. If this layer becomes
depleted or decreased, higher amounts of the UV radiation reach the earth surface where it
shows adverse effects to humans. The UV radiations directly intercalate into human skin
thereby causing the skin cancer especially to people with less melanin pigmentation.
Depletion of this layer also causes damages to both terrestrial and biological systems thereby

Planetary Boundaries and Planetary Health 3
causing an indirect health implication to humans due to decreased sources of the products
produced by the affected systems (Williamson et al., 2019).
Loss of biosphere integrity: biodiversity describes all living things in a single
ecosystem, including the number and species variation and all aspects of the environment
including the levels of temperature, oxygen and carbon dioxide. Biodiversity loss arises from
human activities aiming at increasing the availability of food, water, and natural resources.
The overall effect is the overexploitation of certain natural resources leading to their
extinction. Human health relies on ecosystem products and services. Therefore, a direct
health impact is felt as such ecosystem products are inadequate. Indirectly, human health is
affected by biodiversity loss because of the changes in the ecosystem that may also affect
local migration livelihoods as well as the income. Besides, important discoveries in
medicines are made from understanding the biodiversity of the earth. Therefore, loss of
biodiversity implies a limitation to discoveries of treatment tools for a variety of disease
(Wardle, 2016).
Ocean acidification: one-quarter of carbon dioxide emitted by human activities end up
being dissolved in oceans thereby forming carbonic acid of the oceans. This raises the acidity
which in turn reduce carbonate availability which leads to the hardness of the formation of
structures like shell and skeleton by the marine species. Additionally, increased acidity
prevents the growth and survival of marine species such as shellfish and planktons.
Consumption of ocean plates of seafood is accompanied by lots of health benefits such as the
provision of polyunsaturated fatty acids from seafood. Human health is therefore indirectly
affected as important seafood may not be produced due to the inhibition effect produced by
the high acidity in the oceans towards the ocean and sea organisms (Clements and Chopin,
2017).