Governing Planetary Nanomedicine: Environmental Sustainability and a UNESCO Universal Declaration on the Bioethics and Human Rights of Natural and Artificial Photosynthesis (Global Solar Fuels and Foods) |
| |
Authors: | Thomas Faunce |
| |
Institution: | (1) College of Medicine, Biology and the Environment and College of Law (joint Appointment), Australian National University, Acton, Australia |
| |
Abstract: | Environmental and public health-focused sciences are increasingly characterised as constituting an emerging discipline—planetary
medicine. From a governance perspective, the ethical components of that discipline may usefully be viewed as bestowing upon
our ailing natural environment the symbolic moral status of a patient. Such components emphasise, for example, the origins
and content of professional and social virtues and related ethical principles needed to promote global governance systems
and policies that reduce ecological stresses and pathologies derived from human overpopulation, selfishness and greed—such
as pollution, loss of biodiversity, deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as provide necessary energy, water
and food security. Less well explored in this context, however, is the ethics that should underpin global use of emerging
technologies such as nanotechnology as forms of planetary therapeutics. Nanotechnology may be particularly important, for
instance, as a mechanism for improving upon photosynthesis and engineering it into human structures for localised production
of carbon-neutral hydrogen based-fuel and carbohydrate-based food and fertilizer. Artificial photosynthesis, because of its
unique and widespread public and environmental benefits in this period of human history, may even be termed the moral culmination
of nanotechnology, assisting this planet to move beyond the Anthropocene epoch to that of the Sustainocene. This paper explores
practical steps towards planetary nanomedicine involving governance of artificial photosynthesis, including a UNESCO Universal Declaration on the Bioethics and Human Rights of Natural and Artificial Photosynthesis (Global Solar Fuels and Foods). |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|