Apologies as usual, but please do pass on to those who might be interested.
One world, One health?
The geographies of making life secure
Conveners- Steve Hinchliffe (University of Exeter), Bruce Braun (University of Minnesota)
Sponsored by the
Political Geography Research Group and the Geographies of Health Research Group
Royal Geographical
Society/ Institute of British Geographers
Annual Conference
Edinburgh University
July 3rd-5th
2012
In an era of global
connectivity, emerging infectious diseases and zoonoses, with HIV/AIDS, SARS,
Avian Influenza and Swine flu fresh in people’s minds, it has become common to
seek convergence between previously separate spheres of action governing human,
animal and ecosystem health. A
single bio-communicable planet requires greater cooperation, coordination and
inter-disciplinarity.
The one world–one health
concept has sought, since its inception, to draw together expertise in public
and animal health in order to overcome long established compartmentalisations
of expertise, investment and action.
Absent, though, from the start was a significant social science
component, and this session asks how geographical scholarship can engage with
the OWOH concept’s aim of enhancing global biosecurity through joined up human,
animal and eco-system health initiatives.
The OWOH argument appeals to
common-sense, ill-health is a shared characteristic transgressing species and
system boundaries. The result has
been translated into a shared vision, of “a world capable of preventing,
detecting, containing, eliminating and responding to animal and public health
risks attributable to zoonoses and animal diseases with an impact on food
security through multi-sectoral cooperation and strong partnerships”
(FAO-OIE-WHO Collaboration, 2010).
The achievements to date of securing collaboration across an all too
segmented sector are of course important and it is one of the objectives of
this session to review those gains, at the same time as developing a
geographically informed engagement with the ‘one world’ approach. In a discipline now practised at
speaking of more than one world, of social and natural inequality and
unevenness, of different approaches to health, and to socio-political
understandings of the changing relations between species and ecosystems, there
is clearly much to be gained from this engagement.
Two paper sessions are
planned, the first, securing a healthy planet will seek papers which address the
inter-dependencies of health-environment-animal life. Papers that explore the emergence of the one health idea,
the work it is imagined to do, the contradictions it seeks to overcome, as well
as the practical difficulties it faces will be welcomed. The second, theorising one planet will invite speakers to constructively engage with
the notion of oneness, asking how and why we might argue for more than one
world while recognising the need for theorising connection. Papers that explore spatial and epistemological
multiplicity, multinaturalism, and social and political difference, as these
relate to the governance of global health, will also be welcome.
Possible issues and
sub-themes to be addressed:
Framing the one-health
programme: What political,
epistemological and epidemiological challenges does the OWOH concept seek to
overcome, by what means, and to what effect? In what ways has OWOH changed
understandings, practices and governance of global health?
Understanding emergence
and emergency: What kinds of
geographical imagination tend to be integral to one-world accounts of health
threats? How might current framings of health insecurity be coloured by contemporary
models of liberal governance?
Spatial multiplicity: How does a world of social, material and political
difference and inequality transform health debates? How are different
vulnerabilities understood and acted upon? Where are the emphases in a
one-health programme, and what is lost from view? What spatial
vocabularies might we use to enhance a one world account?
Whose health? How does the North’s focus on zoonoses and contagion
detract from other, sometimes more pressing, health concerns? To what extent
are ecologies incorporated and how might broad ranging questions regarding
environmental change, food production systems and population inform or be lost
from OWOH debates?
Format
There will be two paper
sessions, each with 5 papers and time for discussion.