Planetary palliation: Dying, grief, and solidarity on a damaged planet

Since its emergence a decade ago, the planetary health framework has oriented policymakers, scholars and activists to the intersections of human health and its reliance on healthy ecological systems. Much of the framework is focused, understandably, on sustaining life. But what about death? So much of the apparent Anthropocene is characterised by death – of species, of cultures, of worlds – and, as is often the case with death within neoliberal capitalism, there appears to be no sense of, or medium for, collective grieving. This paper applies the concept of palliative care to planetary health, bringing into focus ways that palliation, as a practice of easing suffering and affirming life even in death, may expand its purview. This paper is also an example of autotheory. I use my experience with my mom in a palliative care unit, and her ultimate death from bone cancer, as a lens through which to theorise about the possibilities afforded by planetary palliation, making the case for collective grieving as political praxis within what I term palliative political ecology. This article was published open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .