Global Health Justice Network

Climate Change and Global Public Health – Law, Justice and Governance

Public health is a matter of central and growing concern to the international community. The processes of globalisation have exposed populations worldwide to new or resurgent health risks, including communicable diseases, chronic conditions generated by global marketing of harmful products and bioterrorism. Such threats transcend geographical boundaries, rendering traditional forms of regulation and control through national laws ineffective. In addition, global interconnectedness has both uncovered and exacerbated inequities in health between and within nations.

The clear ethical imperatives presented by such challenges necessitate the urgent evolution of frameworks of global health justice – which are, at present, lacking – to act as guides to collective action on public health matters. Furthermore, there is a need to critically interrogate the structures of governance (such as the World Health Organisation) and the mechanisms of national and international public health law to assess their suitability to address the particular problems posed by globalisation.

The broad aims of the project are:

• to establish a network of scholars with an expertise in issues of global health justice
• to hold regular workshops on various topics of interest within this broad field
• to foster international academic collaboration
• to provide a resource for national and global policy-makers