ABSTRACT
Environmental philosophers and others may question the valuation of human life over all other life in this assertion, as well as the implicit assumption that "people" can truly manage the natural environment. Human population health nonetheless is an important criterion for efforts by institutional and other actors to guide human action in the natural environment. The major challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century are closely interlinked and increasingly globalized. At local, regional and global scales the crises in health, food and nutrition security, water, energy, climate change, biodiversity loss and poverty frequently overlap in both origins and proximate causes, in their various impacts, and in terms of the policy and practical approaches needed to address them and to effect sustainable long-term solutions. Due to their complexity, both the biodiversity and public health science have to cope with limited understanding.
