IAN BATEMAN, DIRECTOR OF THE LAND, ENVIRONMENT, ECONOMICS AND POLICY INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF EXETER BUSINESS SCHOOL BEN WHEELER, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW AT THE EUROPEAN CENTRE FOR ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF EXETER MEDICAL SCHOOL

Planetary Health seeks to meet the health needs of present and future humans without compromising the natural systems on which that health depends1. To achieve this aim, society has to adopt a way of making decisions that not only considers their narrow financial costs and benefits, but also their broader effects on human health and the natural environment. Only by bringing all of these elements together can we both understand the financial drivers of business behaviour and the wider set of influences upon human wellbeing.

The paper overviews the measures, often called ‘metrics’, available to governments and businesses to understand the health and environmental consequences of alternative decisions and investments. These metrics provide a scientific understanding of the wider effects of change. The paper then shows how these metrics can be brought into conventional economic decision making so they can be considered on a level playing field with other costs and benefits. This approach to understanding decisions from both a business and a wider social wellbeing perspective is commonly referred to as the Natural Capital Approach. The paper consists of three sections, followed by a brief conclusion, and is structured as follows:

• Starting with the human aspects of Planetary Health, we first provide a review of measures of human health and wellbeing. Following an initial focus on the assessment of physical health impacts of challenges such as environmental pollution and hazards, we then highlight the merits of additionally considering the positive impacts of the environment on human health. This discussion expands our focus from simply physical health to include mental health and wider measures of wellbeing. These metrics allow the decision maker to understand the diverse public health consequences of different decisions, or indeed the effects of not making any decision and allowing other factors to determine human health and wellbeing;

• We then move on to consider the environmental aspects of Planetary Health by reviewing measures of environmental status including both quantity and quality metrics. Again this allows the decision maker to see the consequences of different decisions, including inaction. This discussion highlights the great diversity of measures associated with change in the environment and the problem of assessing and comparing such metrics;

• Finally we examine how these health and environmental metrics might be brought into government or business approaches to decision making. The Natural Capital Approach has been developed as a way of bringing health and the environment into conventional economic decision making. This provides a framework for including and translating these metrics for even handed consideration alongside all the other issues which decision makers have to consider, such as the economic benefits and costs of different decisions.