2nd Edition of Public Health World Conference (PHWC) 2026

Biography

Bob Douglas, now aged 89, trained initially in medicine and developed an interest in public health, epidemiology and prevention. He was a closely associated with the development and global licensure of pneumococcal vaccine and was appointed in 1989 to head up the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population health at the Australian National University. He retired from that post in 2001 and has been actively involved during his retirement years on analysis of problems confronting Australia and the world, both through an NGO which he founded and chaired for 12 years, called Australia 21 and through a range of community organisations.

Abstract

The survival crisis that now confronts humans everywhere includes climate disruption, biodiversity collapse, freshwater depletion, chemical pollution, soil degradation, ocean certification, pandemics, food and security and nuclear and technological risk as well as widespread misinformation and lack of understanding about the magnitude of the threat facing all of us. The central problem is too many humans on the planet requiring too much food and resources and our failure to curb this demand.

The Council for the Human Future that is based in Canberra and of which I am a member, is advocating for the development of a global “Earth System Treaty”  (EST) that, if it were supported in the United Nations, would:

• Seek to establish binding and coordinated international commitments to reduce cumulative human pressures on the Earth System.
• Integrate Climate, environment, health, security and development policies into one sustainable framework.
• Create institutional structures capable of monitoring, enforcing and adjusting global environmental limits.
• Mobilise nations, civil society, business, science and indigenous knowledge into a single governance platform.

So, what is standing in the way of us moving on this massive challenge to our future? Perhaps the biggest problem is that we are treating all these issues as single problems rather than as a combined interacting challenge. And we are not yet accepting that we are generating the extinction of our own species.

The science is now very clear, that without action that involves every nation on earth and human actors in it everywhere our human descendants are facing a diabolical future. The immediate challenge as I perceive it is to develop among a group of nations, a united effort to place an Earth System Treaty on the United Nations agenda.