Is Our World Facing a Syndemic?

January 28, 2019 – A syndemic is the confluence of two or more externalities impacting a human population. In today’s world, what are those externalities? One is climate change. The second is pollution. The third is overpopulation. The fourth is sea level rise. The fifth is growing freshwater scarcity. And the sixth is the threat from global pandemics.

Traditionally the word syndemic is associated with the convergence in time of a number of biological threats. For example, because of climate change, insect-borne disease vectors are changing, moving towards the pole both north and south of the equator. Whether malaria, zika, chikungunya, dengue, or other disease spread by mosquitoes, a syndemic is likely to happen in many parts of what is currently considered temperate climate zones as the Earth’s atmosphere continues to warm.

But looking at syndemics from a non-biological perspective one can see human-caused changes occurring on our planet that are setting us up for our own failure. We are the source of climate change, pollution, overpopulation, and sea level rise. It is our demand for food and freshwater resources that is pushing us closer to scarcity and an inevitable agrarian crisis. When we add disease parameter changes to the mix we create many opportunities for a syndemic.

Can you think of other syndemics that are human caused? Combine the opioid crisis with growing obesity, for example. It is frightening to think that we are our own agent for syndemic appearances. And yet we can do something about all of these likely syndemics whether biological or environmental? How?

We have to have to be working on the solutions collectively. Addressing climate change involves group action whether we do it by penalizing ourselves through carbon pricing to change our consumption behaviour, or regulating all carbon producing elements in our economies, or offsetting every ton of carbon pollution using negative-carbon technology, we can reduce the carbon in the atmosphere and begin to reverse atmospheric warming and sea-level rise.

In North America today, the obesity crisis is paralleled by an opioid crisis. Obesity correlates with so many of the diseases and afflictions that beset people in the United States these days. And it is accompanied by significant substance abuse, particularly the use of opioids for the management of pain. One goes hand-in-hand with the other.

It is frightening to think of how self-inflicting all of these things are. And it is also frightening to think of how the industries and businesses of our planet contribute to these syndemics by ignoring what comes along with the products produced by them that provide negative reinforcement.

We can surely do better than allow ourselves as a species to be led by businesses and political leaders who govern themselves by commercial interests over their obligations to a healthy humanity and planet.

In Canada, in the last week, our federal government has come out with a new Food Guide. In the past, the Canadian Food Guide was heavily influenced by the dairy and meat lobbies. The result could be seen in recommendations of significant amounts of dairy and meat in our daily consumption. It had nothing to do with healthy eating and everything to do with supporting the profits of the dairy and meat industry. One would even consider that the old Food Guide was contributing to higher levels of cholesterol and saturated fats in our diet. But now the Food Guide is moving to a dietary standard that contains less red meat, and dairy.

One would hope that our governments can be as forthright in helping us to make healthy choices when it comes to other aspects of our lives including maybe something like a sustainability guide to avoid a future where syndemics become the norm.