Climate change and pandemics, co-producing crisis

As disease outbreaks become more common and increasingly intersects with climate change, with burdens disproportionately effecting countries in the global South, how ought bioethics responded? Bioethics is an increasingly important discipline as specific scientific responses are mounted to addresses these crises. However, bioethics role is often procedural and regulatory. However, responses and interventions to these crises are not neutral. Bioethics therefore has to expand its role in responding to these crises. How might it do so? And what might it require?

To start this process, the EthicsLab and the Ethox Centre hosted a meeting in Cape Town in 2025. The meeting gathered scholars across disciplines including bioethics, medicine, law, economics, philosophy and politics. Through this meeting, we developed more situated accounts of the crises and began developing methods and approaches for bioethics to be respond more robustly the crises. Scholarly also represents various institutions and countries including South Africa, Malawi, Ghana, Brazil and Malaysia. The meeting was funded a Global Infectious Disease Ethics Collaborative (GLIDE).