The Medical Anthropology of Climate Change: Eco-Risks and the Body Environmental

Abstract

Anthropological research can provide the time depth needed for a rich understanding of the health effects of atmospheric and ocean warming, shifting weather patterns, and the breakdown of biological and social systems large and small. Medical anthropologists are poised to document the human costs of floods, fires, droughts and other catastrophic events, as well as the slowly shifting supplies of fresh water, clean air, and adequate food. Our anthropological eyes on the ground are needed for contextual, local, and critical understandings of how human lifestyles of the twenty-first century are creating climate change.