"Digital global health diplomacy" for climate change and human security in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has now affected everyone, threatening every aspect of our well-being with over 617597680 confirmed cases, including 6532705 deaths globally. The context of the Anthropocene is the backdrop for the novel, interlinked, systemic, and global threats. Anthropocene is a term proposed to designate the era in which human beings have become predominant drivers of planetary change, drastically altering the planet’s biosphere. The concept of global health diplomacy (GHD), which connects the domains of health and international relations, has a critical role in advancing human security. Thus, there is a need for new forms of diplomacy, which is critically important in this complex intermestic and interdependent Anthropocene era, where globalization has inevitably linked nations and population health. This paper introduces, analyzes, and attempts to define "Digital Global Health Diplomacy" (DGHD), which has gained great momentum during this COVID-19 pandemic with concurrent health and human security threats. The application of digital formats to the existing traditional structures for dialogue has become a more popular tool recently. Furthermore, digital means are being used during the COVID-19 pandemic to share the health diplomacy discourse at subnational, supranational, international, regional, and global platforms. DGHD reminds us again of the criticality of this multidisciplinary concept involving the contributions of diplomats, global health specialists, digital technology experts, economists, trade specialists, international law, political scientists, etc., in the global policymaking process. If used effectively by trained global health diplomats through innovative digital platforms, DGHD has a great scope of delivering results faster and has more reach than the traditional approach.