Urban Health and Wellbeing: ZEF endorses International Science Council's latest science plan

Street scene in Mumbai, India. Photo by Sneha Sharma.

ZEF is connected to the work of the International Science Council through its senior fellow Franz Gatzweiler and its research and capacity development project One Health and Urban Transformation.

What is important about the ISC's latest science plan on Urban Health & Wellbeing?

• Health is an essential component of all major global agreements on cities, carbon mitigation, or disaster risk reduction. As a majority of people live in cities, cities are the dominant drivers of growth and have the biggest impact on climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, urban health  plays a central role in the response to global systemic risks.
• The new science plan of the Urban Health and Wellbeing programme of the International Science Council recognizes humans as part of global ecosystems and makes a shift from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric systems approach.
• Cities are in the unique position for innovation and collective intelligence to emerge faster than anywhere else. From a systems perspective, urban health is the heart and brain of planetary health. 
• The new science plan of the Urban Health and Wellbeing programme is more than a change in semantics; it denotes an expansion from a focus on human health to approaches where cities create conditions for healthy people and for a healthy planet.

ZEF is looking forward to cooperating more closely on the topic of One Health and Urban Health with the International Science Council in the future.