The Sunway Centre for Planetary Health works with Sunway University’s existing faculties and networks and with regional and international partners to shine a light on planetary health challenges and find solutions that can support the necessary transition that humankind must now make, including generating, translating and communicating evidence-based research. This now unavoidable transition means that we have to learn to do nearly everything differently, including producing and consuming food, manufactured products, and energy; constructing and living in our cities; managing our natural landscapes and resources; co-existing harmoniously and responsibly with social, artificial and digital tech; recalibrating the stories we tell ourselves about our place in the world, our relationship to Nature, and what it means to live a “good life".
Our Priorities
Our Values
Integrity
Demonstrate accountability and transparency to its multiple stakeholders and partners, pursuing its mission with discipline and rigour.
Inclusion
Support and advocate for diversity, pluralism, fairness, and equal opportunity for all.
Collaboration
Inspire constructive dialogue, engage diverse stakeholders, build consensus, facilitate convergence, and forge strong and durable partnerships.
Stewardship
Be a responsible and accountable guardian for nature, and the environment.
Do No Harm
Do no harm and respect the autonomy and dignity of all and be focused on prevention of harm to people and the planet.
Why Planetary Health
Today, we are facing a confluence of multiple crises affecting our collective health as well as that of this planet that we inhabit – Earth. These include new and increasingly virulent infectious disease outbreaks and pandemics, rising obesity and other chronic diseases, unsustainable food production processes, water-related tensions and potential for conflict, rapid biodiversity collapse and the climate crisis.
These crises are driven by a complex interplay of entirely human-generated political, social, economic, and environmental factors, and have dire humanitarian consequences. The hard-won gains in human health over the last century are being eroded by a lack of recognition that this progress has been at the expense of the health of the planet. We are now close to a tipping point where the poor health of the planet will diminish the possibility of healthy and happy lives and survival for succeeding generations.
And so there is a need for a new approach that emphasizes humanity coming together, assuming greater responsibility for our collective actions, working to equalise responsible access to and use of limited resources, underwritten by the need to act now, not later. In response to these challenges, planetary health – a new field and vision – has emerged.
Planetary health is the achievement of the highest attainable standard of health, wellbeing, and equity worldwide through judicious attention to political, economic and social systems. To advance humanity’s wellbeing, the declining state of planet Earth can no longer be ignored.
