Colin Butler

Dr Colin Butler is a Director of the Benevolent Organisation for Development, Health and Insight (BODHI) and Visiting Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, ANU. He is a former Senior Research Fellow of the School of Health and Social Development at Deakin University. His work lies at the intersection of globalisation, health and sustainability. Globalisation includes social, economic, cultural and environmental changes, at scales from the microscopic to the planetary. His main research interest lies in trying to find ways to advance sustainable global health for all, including people who are marginalized and oppressed.

His interests include agriculture, climatology, demography, development, ecology, economics, environmental change, epidemiology, ethics, future studies, general practice, global change, global health, health promotion, human rights, inequality, infectious diseases, nutrition, poverty, public health, social justice, sociology and sustainability. He is particularly interested in ecosocial systems and the relationship between human conflict and resource scarcity.

He also works part time in rural general practice in Tasmania. He holds post graduate qualifications from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and in 2002 he completed a multidisciplinary PhD at the Australian National University. This thesis argued that the unequal distribution of global political and economic influence facilitates "environmental brinkmanship" whereby the wealthy and powerful risk global environmental change of such degree that it threatens the fabric of civilisation. He was extensively involved with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and has published over 100 letters, papers and chapters. In 1989 Colin and his wife Susan co-founded BODHI, an NGO which works in the field of international health and primary health care.

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