💬 Biography
Joyeeta Gupta is full professor of environment and development in the global south at the University of Amsterdam and IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. She won the 2023 Spinoza Prize, the highest academic prize in the Netherlands and the 2025 Amsterdam Impact prize. She has been appointed by the UN Secretary General as co-chair of the Ten High-Level Representatives of Civil Society, Private Sector and Scientific Community to Promote Science, Technology and Innovation for the SDGs for 2024-2026. She was co-chair of the Earth Commission (2019-2024) and Commissioner in the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.
🎤 Presentation: Sharing our Earth: Climate Change and Geriatry
There are limited resources and sinks (ability of the Earth to absorb pollution) on the Earth from local to global level. These limits, which can be physical (e.g. a limit to the land available) or a tipping point (e.g. a limit beyond which the system becomes unstable) have led to the concept of safe boundaries. However, long before safe boundaries are crossed, there can be immense harm to humans – which calls for just boundaries. For example, while the 1.5C is a safe boundary, 1C is proposed as the just boundary. Today most boundaries and ambient standards (e.g. water/air quality) have been crossed, but we have not met the minimum needs/human rights of people. Meeting such human rights also puts a pressure on the Earth system – about 26% additional CO2 (which is roughly equivalent to the pressure of the richest 1-4%). This implies reducing emissions drastically and redistributing who has rights to such emissions. What does this mean for geriatric care in particular? On the impact side, senior citizens in particular are vulnerable of high wet bulb temperatures and extreme weather events which requires increased and tailor-made geriatric care. On the cause side, geriatric care as part of the larger hospital and care system is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, senior citizens, especially those who are wealthy have been among the biggest polluters in the past and present, directly through their production and consumption habits, but also indirectly in the way their pensions, insurances, and savings are invested – often in polluting but economically rewarding investments. What can we do? Medical and geriatric care must try to phase out the use of fossil fuel both directly and indirectly (in the production of pharmaceutical products). The medical and environmental sector need to collaborate to put pressure on the economic system to reduce environmental pressures and prevent ill-health (after all, 1/4th of all death and morbidity can be attributed to environmental causes, and more than 60% of all infectious disease is zoonotic). Preventive health care is cheaper than curative and much better for all humans – including senior citizens.