What happens if we make physical activity promotion sustainable?

Purpose: We are living in an age of environmental degradation. Obviously, research in the field of physical activity (PA) promotion through sport and exercise faces the question on how to deal with this situation. Not only is PA more difficult on a planet that is gradually becoming less habitable, many types of PA are outright harmful for the environment. To this point, the field of PA promotion has largely ignored negative environmental impacts of PA, due to its narrow biomedical perspective. The presentation will raise the question if such a narrow perspective on health is still appropriate, and explore which ethical issues will arise if the field of PA promotion switches to a planetary health perspective.

Methods: The World Health Organization has established an expert group on “NCD prevention and climate change”. The presentation is inspired by discussions taking place at these expert meetings. Additionally, literature on the ethics of public health was reviewed.  

Results: Drawing on H. Shoe’s (1993) distinction between “subsistence emissions” and “luxury emissions”, one could argue that many types of PA cause luxury emissions. According to Shoe, these are the ones that need to be cut first in order to ethically confront climate change. Doing so will pose challenges for PA promotion. It will raise questions on which types of PAs should be promoted, if people should be advised to be less active, and how to balance individual health gains with planetary health losses.

Conclusions: In order to protect the environment, the field of PA promotion could switch to a concept of sustainable PA that is based on a planetary health perspective. Confronting the difficult ethical questions that would come with this paradigm shift is important.