Liz Willetts has spent 20 years at the intersection of nature and health.

In this conversation, she explains why nearly 200 governments have been asking for integrated biodiversity-health indicators for over a decade, and why the scientific community still hasn't delivered them. About the guest: Liz Willetts is a science-policy expert on global governance of the health-environment nexus.

She has served as Planetary Health Policy Director at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, science-policy advisor to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and is a Team Leader, Editor and Writer at IISD's Earth Negotiations Bulletin. She is also a primary care clinician with experience in Micronesia, Central America, and the US. Key takeaways:

  • 196 countries have called for biodiversity-health metrics through the Convention on Biological Diversity for decades, but the health and environmental science communities remain siloed, and integrated indicators still don't exist
  • Even senior clinicians with 10+ years of experience may not know how to define "biodiversity", pointing to a fundamental gap in medical education
  • The post-consumption lifecycle of pharmaceuticals, what happens when drugs exit patients and enter wastewater, represents a massive blind spot in both environmental monitoring and clinical training

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction and Liz's background
03:00 - How environmental decisions are public health decisions
08:00 - Air quality policy as a biodiversity example (Copenhagen low emission zones)
12:00 - The decade-long gap: governments asking for indicators nobody has built
18:00 - The grand rounds anecdote: a clinician who didn't know "biodiversity"
22:00 - Plant blindness and the siloing of scientific education
26:00 - Chronic kidney disease carbon footprint and biodiversity
30:00 - Practical advice for national biodiversity-health strategies
36:00 - Held v. State of Montana: climate litigation as a model for ecosystem values
42:00 - The nature footprint of healthcare: a blank canvas
46:00 - Pharmaceutical pollution and the end-of-life gap
50:00 - What gives Liz hope References mentioned:

Links:

You might also enjoy:

  • Episode 092: Planetary Boundaries & Health with Mia Heide (WELA)
  • Episode 098: Tackling Pharmaceutical Pollution: A Systems-Based Approach
  • Episodes 023/024: The Biodiversity Crisis in Healthcare (two-parter)

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