Although if we continue at the current level of effort, we will miss this 1.5-degree limit by almost another 1.5 degrees by the end of this century. And so Gretha Thunberg’s words resonate strongly – our house IS on fire.

But there is also some hope. We have seen proposals such as the Green New Deal in the USA. Grassroot movements are increasingly emerging on campuses and in communities around the globe like Fridays for Future, the school protest. More business leaders are beginning to see the necessity to make urgent progress on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues as consumers start to look more carefully at how their purchases impact the planet. And more broadly, citizens are starting to connect the dots between their choices and actions and the impact these are having on their environment and, now ever more starkly, on the planet.

THE ASIAN GREEN WAVE

“COVID-19 is a dress rehearsal for entrepreneurial engagement on climate change,” said Tan Sri Dr. Jemilah Mahmood during her keynote address at the JC3 Flagship Conference 2021 (#FinanceForChange) organised by Bank Negara in June. “We are now very afraid of COVID-19’s health impacts and its economic consequences. While that is a valid concern, climate change – a longer lasting, human induced more fundamental planetary disease – is already saddling us not just with debt, but with a lot of economic consequences that are starting to disrupt our societies; something that will only increase if we continue as we are. As we try to flatten the curve of COVID-19, we also need to flatten the curve of our ecological footprint.”

We have many reasons to be alarmed. Our region lies at the heart of planetary health. Our tropical geography and population density is the ideal hotbed for infectious disease outbreaks. It is only a matter of time until the next epidemic erupts in the cross-over between ourselves and animals, forced to live in ever-closer proximity as our appetite for them increases and their natural habitat is destroyed…by us. Changing global weather patterns, driven by meteorological phenomena in our region, are already affecting our environment and our social, economic and political systems and are also having the same or worse effects across the planet.

Pioneering the application of the planetary health approach, which is the achievement of the highest attainable standard of health, wellbeing, and equity worldwide through judicious attention to political, economic and social systems is what Dr. Jemilah hopes to catalyse for Malaysia and for this region. She is a medical professional with extensive experience in managing humanitarian crises and has been a long-standing advocate for addressing the root drivers of crises; in medical terms treating the cause, rather than the symptoms. For Dr. Jemilah, planetary health is a systematic way of joining up the dots and helping humanity identify potential solutions. But translating ambition into action at such a scale is a tall order. She is placing her bet on the newly established Sunway Centre for Planetary Health.

In many ways, Sunway has already taken the first steps. Dr. Jemilah was attracted by the conglomerate’s ecological ethos which acknowledges the logical connection between the planet’s health and our health: no matter how technologically advanced we become there is no way to break the link in our relationship with Mother Earth – healthy planet, healthy people. The Sunway Centre for Planetary Health, which will be led by Dr. Jemilah, will be “a space for advancing knowledge about planetary health, translating academic discourse into accessible and actionable steps and concepts, facilitating learning and creating solutions with a broad range of partners to achieve durable systemic change”. The Centre is a demonstration of Sunway’s commitment to sustainability and its expanding engagement on this most important of topics.

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