Research Program
The Laureate research program has the following five objectives, addressed through three work packages with two interrelated streams. Initial case studies will focus on food, energy, and infrastructure/housing.
Research
Primary Landing Page
Aims
Focusing on governance issues related to three major and interconnected challenges– a rising public health burden, social inequality and climate change - the Hothouse will provide a roadmap towards planetary health equity.
Our work seeks to answer the question: What are the conditions that enable the transformation of the consumptogenic system and ensure the development of intersectoral public policy and commercial activities that advance planetary health equity goals?
The goal of the Laureate is to generate new knowledge about ways to improve the common drivers of climate change and global health inequities and identify how the consumptogenic system can be transformed towards planetary health equity goals. The aim is to drive positive change through idea generation and informed action in policy and business.
We will do this through a governance-focused study of the consumptogenic system, revealing how powerful interests, ideas and institutions enable or hinder the development of intersectoral policy and commercial activities that advance planetary health equity. Based in systems thinking, the research brings together planetary, social and commercial determinants of health inequities.
1. Conduct a political economy analysis of the consumptogenic system driving planetary health inequity.
2. Identify inter-sectoral policies and commercial activities to improve planetary health equity, across key sectors.
3. Understand how state, market and civil actors advance their interests and influence policy and business processes relevant to planetary health equity.
4. Provide the theoretical and analytical advancements to develop a governance framework that advances planetary health equity coherent policies and business practices.
5. Identify strategies that socially-oriented actors in government, international organisations, non-government organisations, and business can use to transform the system to advance planetary health equity goals.
Work Package 1: Exposing the consumptogenic system
We will systematically expose the key macro-economic, political and social drivers of the consumptogenic system in Australia and globally, thus identifying where action needs to focus. We will map the state, market and civil society actors in these systems, producing network maps showing the different types of actors involved in the general and sector-specific planetary health inequity systems, how they are linked and who holds the key levers for change.
Work Package 2: Planetary health equity impact assessment
We will qualitatively assess the impact of current intersectoral policy and commercial activities on planetary health equity and make recommendations for changes to enable coherent policies and business practices that could recalibrate the consumptogenic system towards planetary health equity. A planetary health equity impact assessment tool will be developed.
Work Package 3: Governance to advance planetary health equity policy and business practices
Fundamental to effecting positive change in the consumptogenic system is an understanding of key decision-making processes. We will examine the challenges and opportunities for creating the coherent policy and business practices identified in Work Package Two. This requires understanding the processes of policy-making, the structures in which business decisions are made, the power dynamics between public/private, state/non-state, health/other interests, and the strategies and tactics used by the different actors to advance their interests.
Concepts
Consumptogenic system: This global system is characterised by institutions, policies, commercial activities, norms and behaviours that encourage and reward excessive production and consumption of fossil fuel-reliant goods and services that are unhealthy and inequitably valued and distributed. The consumptogenic system is a root cause of health inequities and climate change.
Planetary Health Equity: The equitable enjoyment of good health in a stable Earth system.
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...Donna Green, Maddie Heenan, Ollie Jay, Harry Kennard, Arunima Malik, Celia McMichael, Mark Stevenson, Sotiris Vardoulakis, Aditya Vyas, Marina B Romanello, Maria Walawender, Ying Zhang
April 6, 2025
In this, the sixth report of the MJA–Lancet Countdown, we track progress on an extensive suite of indicators across these five domains, accessing and presenting the latest data and further refining and developing our analyses.
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This Perspective is authored by participants from our first year of the Future Leaders program. The paper articulates proposed future research directions emerging from shared understandings of intersecting governance and policy challenges, including sections on transdisciplinary and co-productive knowledge paradigms; political economy and governance; policy integration; and opportunities to advance planetary health equity.
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In this commentary, we give examples of some of the avenues by which this transformation could occur, including those that draw on financial and governance mechanisms.
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Our analysis indicates much greater attention to economic issues than to social determinants in countries’ NDCs, particularly in high-income, high-emitting and carbon intensive economies. It seems there is a clear need to reorient policymaking toward health equity and social determinants within these critical climate change policy documents.
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Transparent checks and balances must be built into these systems, with state actors using their regulatory power to guide financial practices in ways that are good for planetary health equity and hold financial actors accountable. Civil society groups can shine a light on these practices, articulate alternative visions and hold financial actors, and governments, to account. Ultimately, financial and commercial worlds must return to stakeholder primacy rather than that of the shareholder.
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To achieve this potential, this working paper recommends: ending fossil fuel-related financing, reducing domestic content requirements for clean energy projects, expanding domestic lending and equity financing for renewable energy, and enhancing ECAs' roles through blended finance frameworks.
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In discussing these preventive actions, this article emphasises the urgent need to transform the consumptogenic system, with a focus on economic models, policy coherence, advocacy, and health sector leadership.
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This exploratory analysis indicates that structural power within the supercluster complex for planetary health equity is not evenly distributed, is highly centralised and dominated by economic governance organisations.
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...Donna Green, Maddie Heenan, Ollie Jay, Harry Kennard, Arunima Malik, Celia McMichael, Mark Stevenson, Sotiris Vardoulakis, Tran N Dang, Gail Garvey, Raymond Lovett, Veronica Matthews, Dung Phung, Alistair J Woodward, Marina B Romanello, Ying Zhang
March 24, 2024
In this, the seventh report of the MJA–Lancet Countdown, we track progress on an extensive suite of indicators across these five domains, accessing, assessing and presenting the latest data and further refining and developing our analyses.
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This commentary reflects on what should follow COP28's successes and failures. It highlights the need to focus on mitigation policies both at national and international levels to avoid the further exacerbation of the climate-health-equity crisis. It calls on governments, especially in high-income countries, to shift towards an economic system centre on wellbeing rather than GDP to create the environment for those mitigation policies to flourish and deliver positive outcomes for people and planet, as well as reshaping COP governance to rebalance power dynamics in the decision-making process.
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Taking the necessary bold mitigation action requires disrupting the consumptogenic system, and the entrenched power inequities that exist at the core of this system. Governments, especially in high-income countries, must use their regulatory power to curb excess commercial activities and stop further coal, oil, and gas projects.
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We analysed the Australian growth model, the politics that sustain this model, and the impacts of the model on people and the planet. We show that the Australian growth model has become more reliant on domestic consumption fuelled by rising house prices and a permissive credit environment to drive economic growth. The key drivers of the Australian growth model have created conditions that undermine economic equality, drive health inequities, and create excessive greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
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The Planetary Health Equity Hothouse is a transdisciplinary research program that aims to present new conceptual thinking and empirical evidence around the complexities, dynamics, and trajectories of the global 21st century consumptogenic system, with a novel focus on the intersections between climate change and social and health inequities. Critically, it aims to provide practical strategies for socially-oriented actors, including governments, civil society, and international organizations to change the consumptogenic system and advance action for planetary health equity.
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...Mark Stevenson, Fay H Johnston, Celia McMichael, Fiona Charlson, Alistair J Woodward and Marina B Romanello
November 7, 2022
The MJA–Lancet Countdown on health and climate change in Australia was established in 2017 and produced its first national assessment in 2018 and annual updates in 2019, 2020 and 2021. It examines five broad domains: climate change impacts, exposures and vulnerability; adaptation, planning and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement. In this, the fifth year of the MJA–Lancet Countdown, we track progress on an extensive suite of indicators across these five domains, accessing and presenting the latest data and further refining and developing our analyses.
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This article lays out ways of advancing planetary health equity goals. To help achieve these, the health community must advocate for and engage in intersectoral policy discussions relating to the social determinants and the structural consumptogenic system. Acting immediately on these issues is critically important if we are to avert a planetary health inequity crisis.
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Recalibrating power inequities might be possible by compelling narration of ideas that advance equity and sustainability, strategic use of institutional processes, and social mobilisation among like-minded and unusual bedfellows."
Enquiries
Please direct general enquiries to: hothouse@anu.edu.au
LinkedIn: @planetary-health-equity-hothouse
Twitter: @PHEhothouse
Postal Address
The Planetary Health Equity Hothouse
School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet)
HC Coombs Extension Building #8
8 Fellows Road
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 2600
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