‘Ecological determinants’ of health in the global south: practising sustainable consumption in Kerala, India

Abstract

Summary Health promotion has long recognized the ecological determinants of health, underscoring the interconnections between planetary health, economic systems and human health. Despite calls for synergy across them, these domains are governed by fundamentally divergent paradigms leading to unaddressed conceptual and institutional gaps. Sustainability, meanwhile, is reduced to personal responsibility and behaviour change. This qualitative research explores ecological determinants through a focus on sustainable consumption in the under-researched context of the global south where rapid modernization has profoundly impacted the natural environment. The article uses the theoretical framework of ‘practice’—namely, the social routines, values, conventions and norms that drive consumption—to critically examine everyday household sustainable consumption in India’s southern state of Kerala. The findings show that in most households, sustainability is a health promotion practice. People practice sustainability fundamentally for its beneficial health outcomes. However, the institutional structures set up in favour of economic development continue to dominate society and is the paradigm that contextualizes everyday social life for consumers. The findings suggest that the practice of sustainable consumption is complex and caught in the space that is neither ‘upstream’ or ‘downstream’; instead, the focus on the ‘mid-stream’ reveals complex calculations that go into everyday negotiation of healthy living.