ABSTRACT
For several decades, ecologists and biologists have been warning of the extinction of various species, of declines in both the quality and extent of ecological capital, and of general and specific environmental degradation. More recently, climate change as a consequence of global warming has been added to the list of environmental concerns worldwide. The concerns arise from the view that global ecological integrity — simply interpreted as the ability of nature’s life-support systems to withstand perturbations and continue to provide their usual life-sustaining services — is a firstorder principle for the sustainability of life on Earth (Soskolne and Bertollini, 1999). Two texts in the early 1990s served to bring these concerns to epidemiologists’ attention (World Health Organization, 1992; McMichael, 1993).
