Human ecology: a bridge between medical ethics and the 2030 Agenda

The United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda is a developing program that aligns all human activities with the goodness and fullness of our planet. Sustainable development goals are grouped into categories, including planet, people, and partnership. Whereas ecology refers to caring for all elements of creation, human ecology points out that man specifically is part of it. It is at this point that medical ethics intersects with ecology. The responsibility of humans for the environment, living beings (animals and plants), and other men is needed for driving all creation to flourishing. Disregarding any of these elements would compromise the whole fulfillment by creatures on Earth, given their close interrelationship. Human abuse, instrumentalization, or exploitation of creatures-including one's own human being-would ultimately destroy our planet. Rather than empowering us with no limits, we should view creation as a gift and we, humans, as caregivers. Given the transformative power of human actions, concerns and regulations are required. This is why medical ethics should guide biotechnological advances, and the cautionary principle should prevail in human research. In this regard, ecology should be understood as the ethics of care. In a pyramidal way, caring should begin with human beings, followed by animals and plants, and finally consider the habitat we live in. In medicine, promoting "one health" underscores the need to expand caring beyond our own species, attending to the consequences of our actions on the environment and other living beings on our planet. The recent experience with the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the risk of zoonoses and the need for confronting human diseases globally.