Oceans and Human Health (ePub)

Human health and well-being are tied to the vitality of the global
ocean and coastal systems on which so many live and rely. We
engage with these extraordinary environments to enhance both our
health and our well-being. But, we need to recognize that
introducing contaminants and otherwise altering these ocean systems
can harm human health and well-being in significant and substantial
ways.

These are complex, challenging, and critically important
themes. How the human relationship to the oceans evolves in
coming decades may be one of the most important connections in
understanding our personal and social well-being. Yet, our
understanding of this relationship is far too limited.

This remarkable volume brings experts from diverse disciplines
and builds a workable understanding of breadth and
depth of the processes - both social and environmental
- that will help us to limit future costs and enhance the
benefits of sustainable marine systems. In particular, the
authors have developed a shared view that the global coastal
environment is under threat through intensified natural resource
utilization, as well as changes to global climate and other
environmental systems. All these changes contribute
individually, but more importantly cumulatively, to higher risks
for public health and to the global burden of disease.

This pioneering book will be of value to advanced undergraduate
and postgraduate students taking courses in public health,
environmental, economic, and policy fields. Additionally, the
treatment of these complex systems is of essential value to the
policy community responsible for these questions and to the broader
audience for whom these issues are more directly connected to their
own health and well-being.

"The seas across this planet and their effects on human society
and its destiny are a fascinating subject for analysis and insights
derived from intellectual inquiry. This diverse and complex subject
necessarily requires a blending of knowledge from different
disciplines, which the authors of this volume have achieved with
remarkable success."

"The following pages in this volume are written in a lucid and
very readable style, and provide a wealth of knowledge and
insightful analysis, which is a rare amalgam of multi-disciplinary
perspectives and unique lines of intellectual inquiry. It is
valuable to get a volume such as this, which appeals as much to a
non-specialist reader as it does to those who are specialists in
the diverse but interconnected subjects covered in this
volume."

(From the "Foreword" written by, R K Pachauri, Director General,
TERI and Chairman, IPCC)