ICYMI: climate justice, dealing with trolls, human rights violations, COVID outbreaks – and air quality matters

Climate colonialism, tips for managing trolls online and wide-ranging insights into the commercial determinants of health are highlighted in the column this week.

Meanwhile, global health leaders are sounding the alarm about Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act and its implications for AIDS as well as human rights.

The quotable?

We call on Facebook to stop putting the onus on us to defend ourselves against a tidal wave of racism and start taking responsibility for what happens on their platforms.”

Climate justice, action and trolls

The authors of this new paper in The Lancet, ‘Envisioning environmental equity: climate change, health, and racial justice’, had three aims:

1. to survey the literature on the unequal health impacts of climate change due to racism, xenophobia, and discrimination through a scoping review
2. to highlight inequalities in responsibility for climate change and the effects thereof
3. to highlight the pathways through which climate change, discrimination, and health interact in most affected areas.

The authors say the health community must “urgently examine and repair the structural discrimination that drives the unequal impacts of climate change to achieve rapid and equitable action”.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the absence of global solidarity and willingness to redistribute resources to secure a safe route out of the pandemic. The same is true of climate change,” they write.

Read the article on climate colonialism Read the First Nations Clean Energy Network paper. In this Nature Careers podcast, two scientists who faced racist and misogynistic abuse from social media trolls outline some strategies needed to tackle it, and how employers should respond. Read the transcript here.

COVID

Listen to the podcast here.

Global health

Read the White House statement. Listen to the interview Listen to the Global Health Matters podcast

Air quality matters

First Nations

See the open letter to Meta/Facebook. The First Peoples Assembly writes: “We call on Facebook to stop putting the onus on us to defend ourselves against a tidal wave of racism and start taking responsibility for what happens on their platforms. We call on them to work with us to provide a safe environment for everyone – because our community shouldn’t be subjected to hatred just for existing and our staff shouldn’t have to sift through such hate when doing their job.”

Of note

See the guidelines

#AusPol

Awards and events

See previous editions of ICYMI….