Victorian Nurses and Midwives turn out in droves for Environmental Health Conference

There was a large turnout in Melbourne in March when the Victorian branch of Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF – Vic) held their second interdisciplinary conference about health and environmental sustainability.

Nurses, midwives and sustainability – we’re all in this together

It was great to see so many nurses in Victoria being involved and showing their support and understanding of the connection between environmental issues and health.

The conference was even bigger than last year’s successful event – there were so many registrations the event had to be moved from the branch’s education centre to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

An inspiring program attracted over 500 members or participants. Sustainability efforts were brought alive through positive stories of possibility and practical action, with motivating speakers capturing the attention of nurses and midwives.

Congratulations to ANMF for making great progress and expanding their annual Health and Environmental Sustainability Conference, their networks and partnerships.

This conference was really an exceptional example of the importance of health professionals getting together and sharing information and having an opportunity to endorse sustainability efforts. Attending a conference of this calibre is clearly appreciated as a useful stepping stone for many health professionals both to start sharing ideas that are already developed without having to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and for taking initial steps to evaluate their own workplace practices.

Networking opportunities abounded, with the conference providing nurses and midwives with the chance to meet other health professionals within workplaces and across health services sharing the same interest in health and environmental sustainability, as well as the chance to connect with leading experts and researchers who came with their expertise in environmental issues and health impacts.

The Climate and Health Alliance was invited to present at this years’ conference and screen the CAHA/PHAA film ‘The Human Cost of Power’. Other presentations features practical and achievable ways to improve environmental sustainability and healthy practices at work and make a real contribution and difference to the health of the community and our environment.

 

 

 

Highlights and speakers

Key speakers included international Dr Barbara Sattler, from the University of San Francisco, Ged Kearney, ACTU President and Jefferson Hopewell, Sustainable Procurement Officer. Other speakers included Chief Councillor Tim Flannery from the Climate Council; Kate Auty, Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability Victoria; Bronwyn Aylmer from Barwon Health; Roslyn Morgan from Monash health green team; Aileen Thoms from Koo Wee Rup Regional Health Service, Environmental Sustainability Officer Monika Page from Melbourne Health; as well as Mark Butler, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water.

 

Highlights

Dr Barbara Sattler is highly respected nurse academic and public health advocate for environmental health and has been integral in initiating environmental health in nursing practice and education.

Some key studies shared by Dr Sattler included a benchmark investigation on pollution in newborns – and biomonitoring studies of chemical exposure in healthcare found in doctors and nurses (such as BPA, phthalates, PBDE, triclosan). The latter found increased risk of developing illnesses such as cancer and asthma among in many health professionals.

Dr Sattler’s emphasis was on the need to removechemical exposures in hospitals and other health settings as well as waste reduction. Suggested ways are through environmentally friendly and sustainable procurement, renewable energy systems, improving efficiency in energy and water use, recycling, and composting among many other things. In accordance to the hospital environmental health assessment tool developed by Health Care Without Harm, better coordination around hospital policy, advocacy, education, research and practice settings was underlined.

Lastly, Dr. Sattler highlighted the importance of nurses and midwives as trusted conveyors of health information to patients, to community and policymakers. Nurses and midwives can bridge the relationship between the community and clinical information, and thus not only have an important voice but ultimately many decisions about healthy/sustainable choices is in their hands.

Jefferson Hopewell from Health Purchasing Victoria told the conference that 56% of environmental footprint in Victoria comes from consumables. Jefferson reports he is (to the best of his knowledge) the only person directly employed in health sector in Australia working on sustainable procurement. Changing to environmentally preferred purchasing practices can be either buyer led or purchaser led and he urged health professionals to make contact with the office of Health Purchasing to discuss greener purchasing options.Barwon Health’sspeaker Bronwyn Aylmer presented a film showing the great work and non-cost driven initiatives being undertaken at Barwon for environmental benefits in the health and food services. They aim to be one of Australia’s greenest health service using a closed loop system, composting food waste and generally reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink all resources and products.

Environmental Sustainability Commissioner Kate Auty highlighted the science of communication and the importance of using simple infographics when communicating messages, especially important in making broader environmental issues personally relevant. Professor Auty shared the key messages from the recently released State of the Environment Victoria 2013 Report, developed to “inform the Victorian community about the health of the natural environment and influence government to achieve environmental, social, cultural and economic sustainability”.Hospitals are massive consumers and producers of waste. Monash health green team are a pioneer in green cleaning replace chemicals with cloths and steam – it’s faster, saves money according to Roslyn Morgan’s presentation ”From Little Things, Big Things Grow”. She concentrated on empowering nurses and bringing the concept closer to home and working environment as well as the possibilities of making a cumulative difference and the opportunities of proactive grassroot and leadership roles as clinical nurses. She Added a forth ‘r’ for relationships to reduce, reuse, recycle.

 

Michael McCambridge and Monika Page Environmental Sustainability Officer from Melbourne Health shared their Think Green Strategy 2011-15 in the presentation ”Know before you throw” about the cost of waste. Clinical waste is more costly than other waste and there are many opportunities to reduce disposal of clinical waste.

Aileen Thoms presented from Koo Wee Rup Regional Health Service – Showing that being a small regional health service is no barrier to making great improvements in environmental health. KRHS are shifting from medical model to socioecological approach to health and reorienting towards being more health promoting and community focused, e.g. by engaging local community kitchen and garden groups. Koo Wee Rup aim to enhance health and wellbeing by intersectoral partnerships and enabling educative and supportive environments for humans and the planet.

 

 

Useful links:

• State of the Environment Victoria 2013 Report
• Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
• Health Care Without Harm
• Barwon Health Sustainability Initiatives on Youtube
• Melbourne Health Think Green Strategy
• Koo Wee Rup Regional Health Service
• The Human Cost of Power
• Our Uncashed Dividend: The Health Benefits of Climate Action
• Recycling near you, where you live
• Health Purchasing Victoria [email protected]

 

By Fiona Armstrong

Published by the ABC on 28 Feb 2014

The Abbott government needs to shed its mindless opposition to carbon pricing and embrace a policy that actually has a chance of addressing climate change, unlike Direct Action.

The Abbot Government’s policy for addressing climate change, the Direct Action Plan, is currently undergoing public scrutiny via a Senate Inquiry into the policy. More specifically the Inquiry will look into whether the plan is a “failure to systematically address climate change”.

Sadly there is little that is ‘direct’ about the Direct Action Plan, as it is largely about using taxation revenue to funnel, through complicated administrative schemes, subsidies to polluting industries for emissions reductions they might make anyway. It reduces any incentives for long-term emissions cuts due to a short program time frame.

Despite being touted as the cornerstone of national climate policy, the Direct Action Plan will not even achieve the wildly inadequate emissions reduction target of a five per cent cut on 1990 levels by 2020, let alone the Climate Change Authority’s recommended 19 per cent cut. In the words of The Climate Institute: “No independent analysis to date has shown that the policy framework as outlined can achieve Australia’s international obligations and emission commitments.” (pdf)

Bit of a worry, isn’t it?

A more ‘direct’ way of achieving emissions reductions might be to impose a financial penalty or disincentive to pollute. That would increase the costs of emission per tonne, raise the relative costs of emissions-intensive practices and create an incentive to find lower emissions alternatives. It would also make cleaner, lower emissions pathways relatively cheaper, compared to now. But, oh wait… that’s what we already have in the form of a carbon price. It’s the advice of leading economists, climate policy experts (pdf), the OECD and the World Bank to put a price on carbon. Yet the Abbott government is seeking to abolish it.

Other elements of the (as yet poorly spelled out) Plan include the employment of masses of young people to plant trees. A laudable aim, both for youth employment and for revegetation projects, but as an emissions strategy, it’s a bit like saying you’re going to stop the warming of the ocean by picking up litter on the beach: nice idea but hopelessly inadequate in tackling the core problem.

The core problem, as it stands, is our fossil-fuels intensive energy system, based as it is on coal, gas and oil. Until we begin to transition away from these energy sources and take advantage of our abundant, cost effective (because they carry few or none of the “externalities” of fossil fuels, like environmental harm and damage to people’s health) renewable energy resources like wind and solar, we’re basically spitting into the wind.

Despite the rhetoric, the Direct Action Plan and its Emissions Reduction Fund will not fund lowest cost, effective emissions reductions with minimal administration. It seems more likely it will to do the opposite by supporting high polluters with large subsidies to make little or no emissions reductions, at the same time as creating a massive increase in paperwork with a project-by-project approach that will cost more and disproportionately burden smaller organisations.

Multidisciplinary

But the core issue in regard to the Direct Action Plan for health and medical professionals is that this and other proposed climate and energy policies fundamentally overlook the full truth about climate change: that it is not an environmental problem, and cannot be solved by a single portfolio approach. It is a profoundly complex issue that impacts on every corner of society, every industry, every person, every species.

But while it is complex, and no other challenge like it has been faced by human society before, we know what to do. It’s not like we’ve just found out about it. A recent note from the Australian Parliamentary Library chronicles the sad and chequered history of climate policy in Australia, starting back in 1972, smeared as it is by the fingerprints of rent seekers, big coal, oil giants, gutless politicians, climate deniers and those who are willing to willfully gamble the lives and futures of our children, our grandchildren and a future for the extraordinary miracle of human existence on this tiny blue planet.

Climate change is, as the international medical journal The Lancet wrote in 2009, the biggest threat the global public health this century. Climate change threatens the future of human civilisation. As leading climate scientist Hans Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute in German says, if we hit a temperature rise of four degrees, projected for mid century on current rates of emissions, the difference between that and our (also too high) target of two degrees, may be “human civilisation”. That’s a big gamble to take.

And it’s not one we need to take. As the European Commission 2050 Roadmap outlines, the pathway to a low carbon economy offers lower energy costs, cleaner air, a healthier community, and the preservation of vital natural capital.

In its flagship report (pdf) on a global low carbon transition, the German Advisory Council on Global Change is emphatic that the key ingredients for this necessary transition are available. It states: “the technological potential for comprehensive decarbonisation is available”, the business and financial models are available, and “the political instruments needed for a climate friendly transformation are widely known”.

Here in Australia, two sets of comprehensive modelling, from Beyond Zero Emissions and the University of NSW (pdf), show affordable technologies for a 100 per cent renewable energy supply for Australia are available now, at a lower cost than polluting ones.

The Abbott government would do well to look beyond its rhetoric and determined opposition to policies that have global and expert support. To do otherwise risks failing in its duty of care to act in the interests of Australian citizens, by leading us on a global warming pathway which looks to carry the kinds of profound consequences only those well versed in the Bible may yet have contemplated.

Fiona Armstrong is a health professional and founder and Convenor of the Climate and Health Alliance, a coalition of healthcare stakeholders working together for an evidence based response to climate change.