Environmental sustainability and the limits of healthcare resource allocation

Recent literature has drawn attention to the complex relationship between health care and the environmental crisis. Healthcare systems are significant contributors to climate change and environmental degradation, and the environmental crisis is making our health worse and thus putting more pressure on healthcare systems; our health and the environment are intricately linked. In light of this relationship, we might think that there are no trade-offs between health and the environment; that healthcare decision-makers have special responsibilities to the environment; and that environmental values should be included in healthcare resource-allocation decisions. However, we argue that these claims are mistaken. The environmental crisis involves a wider range of considerations than just health. There is a plurality of reasons to act on the environment; we might do so to protect the natural world, to prevent catastrophes in other parts of the world, or to avert climate war and displacement. Trading-off between health care and environmental sustainability is thus unavoidable and requires sensitivity to all these reasons. Healthcare decision-makers are not well placed to be sensitive to these reasons, nor do they have the democratic authority to make such value judgements. Therefore, decisions about environmental sustainability interventions should be made at a ‘higher level’ of resource allocation. Importantly, hospitals have environmental duties but not environmental responsibilities; their job is to provide the best healthcare possible within the constraints given to them, not to choose between health care and other goods.