Digital planetary health needs ethical guidance

Digitalisation, the transfer of tasks and dimensions of human life to digital platforms, is causing changes in planetary health. Digital planetary health, as one could call it, has the potential to facilitate the development of healthy, robust, and sustainable societies and regenerative ecosystems.1Tucker J Disruptive possibilities: AI and planetary health.in: Thörnkvist M Hafner R Drury R If only the lake could talk: futures of AI for sustainability. Media Evolution, Malmö2022: 73-79Google Scholar Artificial intelligence can track emissions and identify maintenance needs in health-care facilities, leading to a reduced carbon footprint.2Das KP J C A survey on artificial intelligence for reducing the climate footprint in healthcare.Energy Nexus. 2023; 9100167Crossref Scopus (19) Google Scholar Artificial intelligence can be instrumental in advancing our understanding of energy resources and climate change; it allows us to analyse the complex factors contributing to climate shifts and estimate energy demands for consumers and businesses. Digital technology has already made substantial strides in reducing the impact of natural disasters.3Creutzig F Acemoglu D Bai X et al.Digitalization and the anthropocene.Annu Rev Environ Resour. 2022; 47: 479-509Crossref Scopus (30) Google Scholar By applying big data approaches to urban planning, climate change mitigation strategies (eg, low-carbon urban planning) can be expedited. Geolocation data can be used to track the effect of natural disasters. Artificial neural networks are proving to be valuable tools in environmental pollution control.4Ye Z Yang J Zhong N Tu X Jia J Wang J Tackling environmental challenges in pollution controls using artificial intelligence: a review.Sci Total Environ. 2020; 699134279Crossref PubMed Scopus (62) Google Scholar These networks offer efficient and attractive solutions for tackling complex, uncertain, interactive, and dynamic environmental problems. Multilayer perceptrons, radial basis neural networks, and support vector regression can help decision makers protect and enhance vegetation diversity in mountainous areas that are subject to human pressures.5Jahani A Saffariha M Nezhad ZH Predicting the anthropogenic impacts on vegetation diversity of protected rangelands: an application of artificial intelligence.Biodivers Conserv. 2024; 33: 1051-1078Crossref Scopus (1) Google Scholar Several international agencies are taking the lead in digital planetary health.6Adamczyk CL United Nations Environment Programme, initiatives for communicating environmental big data: considering DEAL and WESR.Environ Commun. 2023; 11: 1-8Google Scholar The UN Environment Programme's (UNEP) World Environment Situation Room provides a federated data system of the best accessible sets of environmental big data to support decision making, policy, and action at the global, regional, national, and local levels for sustainable development and national planning needs. The Global Environment Monitoring System for Air, a remarkable digital tool by UNEP and IQAir, monitors air quality in 5000 cities worldwide.7de Camargo ET Spanhol FA Slongo JS et al.Low-cost water quality sensors for IoT: a systematic review.Sensors. 2023; 234424Crossref Scopus (22) Google Scholar Real-time data are displayed on digital billboards to alert people to air quality risks. UNEP's Integrated Monitoring and Environmental Information System gathers data to reduce methane emissions. The UNEP and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition used five global composition climate models to evaluate changes in the Earth's climate system and surface ozone concentrations due to reductions in methane emissions. This project, known as the Global Methane Assessment, suggests that a 45% reduction in human-caused methane over the next decade could prevent premature deaths, asthma-related hospital visits, and crop losses globally.8UN Environment Programme—Climate and Clean Air CoalitionGlobal methane assessment: benefits and costs of mitigating methane emissions. United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi2021Google Scholar The European Commission launched the Destination Earth initiative, aiming to create a high-precision digital model of the Earth. This planetary digital twin, based on real-time data, enables the prediction of future events, early warnings, and precise interventions for planetary health. Global and planetary health practitioners need to familiarise themselves with the latest developments in digital planetary health. It is telling that WHO's Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020–2025 does not contain key words relating to planetary health, such as climate change, pollution, or planet. Although digitalisation holds great potential for applications that aid global sustainability, it is not a guaranteed solution.9Coalition for Digital Environmental SustainabilityAction plan for a sustainable planet in the digital age.https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6573509Date: 2022Date accessed: July 13, 2024Google Scholar Digital technologies, with their energy and material requirements, and their influence on consumer behaviour, have accelerated anthropogenic impacts on the environment. There is already a digital divide, in which many people in low-income and middle-income countries not only have insufficient access to adequate food, clean water, housing, clothing, and health care, but also to digital platforms and communication technologies. Ethics is therefore crucial for the development of digital planetary health. In the current technological context, ethics should focus on instilling ethical principles into the people in charge of designing and using digital tools, rather than hardwiring them into machines that are not yet capable of acting as moral agents. Virtuous humans are needed in generating and feeding training data during model development and in reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with the internet and data centres. Ethics for digital planetary health can prioritise the character dispositions of professionals in digitalisation, who effectively guide ethical practices. Ethics for digital health generally prioritise fairness, transparency, and accountability and align with virtues such as justice, honesty, responsibility, care, prudence, and fortitude, all of which have the potential to help overcome algorithmic biases and moral disengagement.10Hagendorff T A virtuebased framework to support putting AI ethics into practice.Philos Technol. 2022; 35: 55Crossref Scopus (19) Google Scholar A virtuous digital planetary health professional should be prudent in developing new digital initiatives that are consistent with human rights and the integrity of the Earth system, be honest and responsible to stakeholders, take reasonable care of the biosphere of the Earth, courageously eliminate digital barriers, and justly reduce disparities in acces to digital health among social groups. Policy makers for digital planetary health should likewise work to develop tools that improve access to preventive measures and health care, ensuring equitable benefits. The flourishing of human civilisation cannot be actualised if the planet is not flourishing.11Ip EC From the right to a healthy planet to the planetary right to health.Lancet Planet Health. 2023; 7: e104-e105Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (0) Google Scholar I declare no competing interests.