Planetary Health Initiative launches in Sydney

SYDNEY, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- The University of Sydney's Planetary Health Platform was launched by former Prime Minister of New Zealand and United Nations Development Program Administrator Helen Clark on Thursday.

The world's first such initiative aims to tackle a range of issues across the globe with projects ranging from mental health to climate change.

"Planetary health is about safeguarding the health and wellbeing of current and future generations through the good stewardship of earth's natural systems," professor of planetary health Tony Capon, from the University of Sydney, told Xinhua.

"It's about rethinking the way we feed, move, house, power and care for the world."

At the very top of the platforms agenda is to discover creative solutions that are needed to make the transformation to a sustainable world.

"We will do research like all university faculties do, but what will be different, is it will be interdisciplinary research," Capon explained.

"So we will bring together many disciplines to address a single problem."

"Because when it comes to contemporary complex problems like the obesity epidemic for example, it's not simply about addressing food systems because problems like that include a combination of factors which involve the broader environment and the sedentary behaviors of people living cities."

Already the initiative has gained a vast array of support from institutions around the world with Harvard University in the United States, the African Population and Health Research Center in Kenya and the University of Edinburgh in Britain, among the first partners of the initiative.

Some of China's major academic networks have also joined the platform as well, with Peking University, Tsinghua University's Earth Science Center, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Chinese Academy of Science all working together in the global effort for improved planetary health.

"The concept of planetary health is actually very closely related to the Chinese idea, which is referred to as eco-civilization," Capon said. Enditem