For AY2022-2023, The University Seminar on Complexity Science, Modeling and Sustainability, will focus on the neglected nexus between Eco-Climate Crisis, Public Health and Equity. Ecosystem and biodiversity protection can support both human health and help address carbon emissions. Climate change is also impinging on ecosystems and biodiversity, so addressing climate change, in turn, will help mitigate ecosystem and species loss. The pathways we choose to address the eco-climate crisis have large impacts on already deep inequities that exist at local and global scales. For example, current decarbonization pathways, often imply deepening extraction and use of Global South resources as well as biodiversity destruction. Thus, we must be able to build approaches that grapple with these complexities. Finally, links between these dynamics and ongoing public health challenges need more discussion given that the inter-related dynamics of biodiversity loss, habitat destruction and climate change (eco-climate nexus) are linked to increasing zoonotic diseases and other public health challenges that have deeply inequitable effects. This year, we plan to work on these themes by inviting researchers and policymakers who can help us think through how to escape silos and work in frameworks that embrace this complexity in our research, education and action.
