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Ecological perspectives on water, food, and health security linkages: the Minamata case in Japan

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Abstract

Extant studies address water, food, and health security issues considerably separately and within narrow disciplinary confines. This study investigates the links among these three issues from an ecological viewpoint with a multidisciplinary approach in a modified Millennium Ecosystem Assessment framework developed by the United Nations. The modified framework includes water, food, and health security considerations as the three constituents of human well-being from an ecological (more specifically, ecosystem services) viewpoint. This study examines the links through published data associated with the Minamata incident, which was a historic and horrific methylmercury-induced water, food, and health poisoning crisis in Japan. The results show that when heavy metal pollution changes one component (marine water) of the provisioning ecosystem services, this change subsequently affects another component (seafood) of the services. This then defines the linkages among water, food, and health security as the three constituents of human well-being within the modified framework. The links can have immediate and far-reaching economic, social, legal, ethical, and justice implications within and across generations. This study provides important evidence for emerging economies that ignore the water–food–health security nexus.

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Acknowledgements

The author sincerely thanks the three anonymous reviewers and journal editor, Philippe Garrigues, for their valuable comments. The comments have helped improve the quality of this manuscript. The author is deeply indebted to Tadao Itoh and Ryohei Kada for their stimulating discussions of various environmental and natural resource economics and policies in Japan on different occasions.

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  1. Department of Economics, School of Business, Monash University (Malaysia Campus), 47500, Sunway City, Selangor, Malaysia

    Ashutosh Sarker

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Highlights

• Changes in ecosystem services successively impact the environment and public health.

• Water, food, and health security are all linked.

• The links were evident when examining methylmercury pollution in Minamata, Japan.

• Environmental regulations should consider such links.

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Sarker, A. Ecological perspectives on water, food, and health security linkages: the Minamata case in Japan. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 32177–32189 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14207-8

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