Diversifying the Society-Nature Paradigm within One Health and Planetary Health: Embracing ‘Symbiosis’ and Unlearning ‘Distance’ for Just Social-Ecological Trajectories

The discipline environmental public health increasingly addresses the relationship between society and nature, including non-human entities. This is exemplified in frameworks like One Health and Planetary Health, serving as pivotal epistemological guides for sustainability efforts. We observe that both concepts align with a predominantly Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) worldview and begin this perspective by outlining how these WEIRD characteristics unfold. In this course, our first argument posits that, rather than representing the full diversity of existing society-nature paradigms that guide interactions with nature, the WEIRDness embedded in One Health and Planetary Health is focusing on and reinforcing a questionable conceptual separation of society and nature. We find that is due to various dynamics such as hazard frames of nature coupled with capitalist-driven practices of nature commodification. On this basis, our second argument posits that the distanced society-nature conception leads to epistemological and practical environmental injustice along hegemonic asymmetries within One and Planetary Health. We show this by analyzing public debates, research narratives as well as global policy implications from an intersectional environmental justice lens. Acknowledging the differences of society-nature paradigms existing within and beyond Western spheres, our analysis considers a series of possible conceptions arranged on a continuum, from rather separate to symbiotic. We use these insights to advocate for a diversification of the dominant society-nature paradigm within both health concepts. Drawing on insights from non-Western, traditional, and Indigenous examples, we propose trajectories for an advancement of One Health and Planetary Health that incorporate versatile knowledge and sustainable living practices. In this way, we not only want to contribute to the refinement of the concepts in the wake of the planetary crisis, but also to spur more epistemologically inclusive discussions of environmental justice that interrogate the value and rights of nature, which society is a part of.