Factor five - Towards global sustainability through doing much more with much less

This is a revised text of the third lecture of the 2014 public lecture series, "The Path Toward a Global Civilzation" hosted by the Institute of Oriental Philosophy on October 2 in Tokyo. Dr Desha is a research principal of the Australian team at the Natural Edge Project which published Factor 5: Transforming the Global Economy through 80% Increase in Resource Productivity (2009) in collaboration with Dr Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker.

Biological and environmental determinants

This chapter describes biological and environmental determinants of the health of Australians, providing a background to the development of successful public health activity. You will recall from the introduction to Section 2 that health determinants are the biomedical, genetic, behavioural, socioeconomic and environmental factors that impact on health and wellbeing. These determinants can be influenced by interventions and by resources and systems (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) AIHW 2012a). Many factors combine to affect the health of individuals and communities. People’s circumstances and the environment determine whether a population is healthy or not. Factors such as where people live, the state of their environment, genetics, their education level and income, and their relationships with friends and family are all likely to impact on their health. The determinants of population health reflect the context of people’s lives; however, people have limited control over many of these determinants (WHO 2007).