The urban political ecology of antimicrobial resistance: A critical lens on integrative governance

Raphael Aguiar, Roger Keil and Mary Wiktorowicz

Social Science & Medicine, 2024, vol. 348, issue C

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to integrate Urban Political Ecology (UPE) as a theory for identifying under-exposed urban dimensions of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). A UPE lens allows us to conceptualize urbanization as a ubiquitous socio-ecological process and an interpretive frame that could inform AMR governance strategies across related contexts by: a) situating AMR risks in relation to urbanization processes shaping social and political co-determinants of such systemic threats as climate change; b) aligning UPE scholarship with One Health (OH) approaches that address AMR to reveal the under-exposed link of AMR to environmental threats and broader structural dimensions that influence these threats; and c) identifying shared AMR and environmental governance pathways that inform the rationale for more equitable governance arrangements. We delineate a context in which the speed and scale of human activity in the larger context of urbanization, driven by global market integration strategies, impacts human-animal-environmental health threats such as AMR. We demonstrate how UPE scholarship can be leveraged to offer theoretical depth to approaches considering the interdependencies of AMR and climate change threats. We then propose a strategic approach focused on identifying shared governance pathways and intersectoral accountability frameworks to address upstream structural drivers of AM-Environmental threats. The co-benefits of a UPE-informed framework to human-animal-environmental health that leverages enabling policy environments to foster a more collaborative, equitable and sustainable approach to address systemic global health threats are clarified. Just as the concept of “health in all policies” emphasized taking health implications into account in all public policy development, the integration of UPE in AMR governance arrangements would emphasize the need to take other sectors into account through an intersectoral whole-of-government approach that fosters shared AMR - climate change governance pathways.

Keywords: Urban political ecology; One Health; Antimicrobial resistance; Global health governance; Climate change; Environmental threats (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624001333
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:348:y:2024:i:c:s0277953624001333

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116689

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().