Economics for people and planet-moving beyond the neoclassical paradigm.

Despite substantial attention within the fields of public and planetary health on developing an economic system that benefits both people's health and the environment, heterodox economic schools of thought have received little attention within these fields. Ecological economics is a school of thought with particular relevance to public and planetary health. In this article, we discuss implications of key ecological economics ideas for public and planetary health, especially those related to critiques of gross domestic product as a measure of progress and economic growth as the dominant goal for economic and policy decision making. We suggest that ecological economics aligns well with public health goals, including concern for equality and redistribution. Ecological economics offers an opportunity to make the transition to an economic system that is designed to promote human and planetary health from the outset, rather than one where social and environmental externalities must be constantly corrected after the fact. Important ideas from ecological economics include the use of a multidimensional framework to evaluate economic and social performance, the prioritisation of wellbeing and environmental goals in decision making, policy design and evaluation that take complex relationships into account, and the role of provisioning systems (the physical and social systems that link resource use and social outcomes). We discuss possible interventions at the national scale that could promote public health and that align with the prioritisation of social and ecological objectives, including universal basic income or services and sovereign money creation. Overall, we lay the foundations for additional integration of ecological economics principles and pluralist economic thinking into public and planetary health scholarship and practice.

Relationships between Child Development at School Entry and Adolescent Health-A Participatory Systematic Review.

The relationship between child development and adolescent health, and how this may be modified by socio-economic conditions, is poorly understood. This limits cross-sector interventions to address adolescent health inequality. This review summarises evidence on the associations between child development at school starting age and subsequent health in adolescence and identifies factors affecting associations. We undertook a participatory systematic review, searching electronic databases (MEDLINE, PsycINFO, ASSIA and ERIC) for articles published between November 1990 and November 2020. Observational, intervention and review studies reporting a measure of child development and subsequent health outcomes, specifically weight and mental health, were included. Studies were individually and collectively assessed for quality using a comparative rating system of stronger, weaker, inconsistent or limited evidence. Associations between child development and adolescent health outcomes were assessed and reported by four domains of child development (socio-emotional, cognitive, language and communication, and physical development). A conceptual diagram, produced with stakeholders at the outset of the study, acted as a framework for narrative synthesis of factors that modify or mediate associations. Thirty-four studies were included. Analysis indicated stronger evidence of associations between measures of socio-emotional development and subsequent mental health and weight outcomes; in particular, positive associations between early externalising behaviours and later internalising and externalising, and negative associations between emotional wellbeing and later internalising and unhealthy weight. For all other domains of child development, although associations with subsequent health were positive, the evidence was either weaker, inconsistent or limited. There was limited evidence on factors that altered associations. Positive socio-emotional development at school starting age appears particularly important for subsequent mental health and weight in adolescence. More collaborative research across health and education is needed on other domains of development and on the mechanisms that link development and later health, and on how any relationship is modified by socio-economic context.

Reconstructing pre-fire vegetation condition in the wildland urban interface (WUI) using artificial neural network.

Wildfires occurring near and within cities are a potential threat to the population's life and health and can cause significant economic damage by destroying infrastructure and private property. Due to the relatively small area of these wildlands, the accuracy of fire risk-assessment plays a significant role in fire management. Introducing the experience of real events can improve accuracy. But this approach is limited by a lack of knowledge of pre-fire conditions, mainly vegetation characteristics as related to their definition as a fuel parameter because of their high temporal variation. To solve this problem, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was designed to reconstruct the spectral characteristics of the vegetation just before the fire with spatial resolution 0.5-2 m from the Landsat image. To test the effectiveness of the proposed methods, the approach has been examined on urban vegetation sites and applied to restore spectral information of the actual vegetation patch before it was burned in 2016 in Haifa, Israel. The results show that the reconstructed RGB image allows for mapping the location of green vegetation with high spatial accuracy. However, spectral data in the visible range have some limitations when it comes to identifying differences between soil and dry plants. The reconstructed image was used to sharp the original data from Landsat. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index maps were produced from the resulting high-resolution multispectral image. The output maps allow to determine the location of vegetation and estimate the level of its dryness on the urban wildland landscape. The proposed method aims to estimate vegetation dryness and, as a result, identify the fuel characteristics at the time of the fire. It has the potential of using for evaluation and improve the weights of the input parameters for the fire-risk assessment and fire-behavior modeling on a specific area.

Ash-soil interface: Mineralogical composition and physical structure.

Fires exert many changes on the physical, chemical, morphological, mineralogical, and biological properties of soil that, in turn, affect the soil's hydrology and nutrient flux, modifying its ability to support vegetation and resist erosion. The ash produced by forest fires is a complex mixture composed of organic and inorganic particles with varied properties. This research was conducted to study and characterized ash properties produced at different temperatures and with different soil organic matter combinations. The samples, which included two treatments of soils with underlying mixed leaves and branches composed mainly by Pinus halepensis, Pistacia lentiscus, Cistus salviifolius and typical herbaceous vegetation, versus samples of mixed leaves and branches alone. Both were exposed to 400°C and 600°C heat in a muffle furnace for 2h. The residue ash was generally grayish, consisting of mixed-sized particles that preserved almost none of the original characteristics of the fuel, and was deposited in ash layers with diverse physicochemical and textural properties. The results of this study highlight the differences between all examined samples and strongly support the assumption that ash produced from a complex vegetation-soil system is a new substance with unique structural, textural, and mineralogical properties. Moreover, the ash produced at different temperatures appeared in distinct layering patterns.