Neoliberalism and the environmental issues essay

We use interchangeably the terms people with disabilities and disabled people throughout this article, to highlight disability as both in terms of impairment and in terms of social oppression. People with disabilities are also affected through reforms that specifically target them.

A series of policy developments — in the areas of health and labour, mainly — have promoted a neoliberal agenda that directly affects the lives of people with disability, causing in many cases material deprivation, insecurity, and stigmatisation [ 26 ]. Many vital health services, such as cancer-screening programmes, mental health services, and municipal public health services, have been severely cut [ 63 ].

Guided by the World Health Organisation [ 17 ], in this article we define disability as limitations in participation in any aspect of everyday life due to the interaction between impairment or illness and the environment. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name.

Neoliberalism and environmental sustainability

The effects of this range from catastrophic out-of-pocket payments to compromised access to healthcare. Chile has universal health coverage, in the sense that all citizens have access to healthcare services. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. In this climate, we can observe the emergence of neoliberal disability: disabled people are often viewed as costly bodies who use up limited healthcare resources [ 15 ] or as potentially financially burdensome [ 24 ]. This feature is developing, it is claimed, as a result of advanced capitalism and the accompanying phenomena of post-industrial society and postmodern culture. Ireland began taxing HDPE bags in , and has since incurred a 90 per cent reduction in their usage; China has saved 37 million barrels of oil annually since banning free HDPE bags; and the banning of free plastic bags in South Australia has foreshadowed a 90 per cent reduction in their usage since Increased co-payment for medications is an example of a policy that while it applies to the entire population, it may affect disproportionately people with disabilities [ 15 ], since they may need medication on a regular basis. HDPE bags are made of polyethylene which, like all plastics, is composed of fossil-fuel oil. But in the s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the mainstream. Greece, on the other hand, is one of the most recent examples of countries that, because of conditionality clauses attached to debt management programmes, had to carry out extensive changes in the public sector, including healthcare. Broad contextual issues, such as transportation, policies, and health systems can have a big impact on how people with disabilities access healthcare. Measurements of ozone, which began in , were first comprehensively measured by satellite in

Given what we now know about the necessity of environmental goods for human prosperity and survival, a truly liberal policy would locate environmental factors as fundamental to all good public policy. This article is based on a critical analytical review of the literature and on two case studies, Chile and Greece.

Having free access to healthcare through such schemes will not benefit people who cannot even get to a healthcare facility because of, for example, lack of appropriate and affordable transportation [ 16 ]. Bell, D.

There is an extensive body of research on the impact of neoliberalism on access to healthcare for the general population [ 9 — 14 ]. Dobson, A. The sovereign debt crisis that hit Greece resulted in the end of the Greek socioeconomic model of —, and the transition from a mainly state-led familistic model characterised by heavy public indebtedness to a liberal, partly de-familialised capitalism [ 19 ].

Writing to the Prime Minister of Greece, the National Confederation of Disabled People [ 71 ] outlined the impact of neoliberal, austerity-driven policies on access to healthcare for people with disabilities.

Combined with what Adam and Papatheodorou [ 58 ], p.

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