Ecological Inequalities and Social Inequalities in health

Taking into account the growing number of people exposed to environmental risks in the EU member countries and the budgetary constraints weighing on their respective social protection systems, an overall redesign of social policies is at stake. Against this background piecemeal measures are indeed not sufficient to cope with new challenges and paradigm shifts will be needed to deal with environmental problems and their consequences for affected populations.

How can we take care of the people who are victims of these environmental risks? Who should finance this? Based on which principles (insurance-based or universal) and by which means? What kind of coverage could be provided by the social protection system (sickness insurance in particular) in different countries with equivalent institutions? How can we at the same time tackle the issue of ‘ecological inequalities’ taking into consideration that in complex environments presenting an accumulation of disadvantages (poor working and living conditions, smoking, alcoholism) it is not easy to isolate the effects of environmental damage as other variables have to be held constant.

And how the responsibilities should be shared between stakeholders, social partners and the state when, for instance, people living close to the borders of different countries are affected by the same environmental-related problems?

My presentation will therefore be organized as follows: first I will provide a brief overview of challenges (for instance assessing existing and potential damage to the health of affected populations) posed for social protection systems as far as environmental issues are concerned, then I will comment on some of the main key drivers of change I could identify in social policies related to the impact related to environmental problems and possible social policy responses will be explored.