Climate change is health crisis that me must not delay fighting

Context: Health threat due to COVID is well understood around the world. But, the enormous health threat of global warming is under-recognized and poorly understood.

Health threat due to climate change

• Hotter temperatures lead to a higher incidence of heatstroke.
• Prolonged droughts, just like severe floods, reduce agricultural productivity and output.
• Rising sea levels turn drinking water saltier, which increases rates of high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia and premature births.
• Severe floods cause raw sewage to flow into streets and contaminate drinking water, spreading infection. They also destroy crops, driving malnutrition.
• Eg. During the 2020 monsoon season in Bangladesh, water flooded a quarter of the country. More than 1.3 million homes were damaged and hundreds of people died.

Way forward

• Learning from successes and shortcomings of pandemic response that how narrow national interests and socioeconomic inequality can limit access to affordable options, prolonging the crisis.
  • Eg. No progress on waiving IPR on vaccine technologies.

• Governments should engage civil- society organizations to support efforts in the coming decades to address the health challenges brought about by climate change.
• Build a collaborative global process that generates, values, and uses scientific evidence to act on climate change and improve health for everyone.
• Evidence and research should be at heart of policymaking: Fund research that enables us to better understand and address the negative effects of global warming on health.
• Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions: Cutting emissions can have a direct, positive effect on health.
• Global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy could increase average life expectancy globally by at least one year. 
• Widespread adoption of diets rich in vegetables and low in meat will reduce greenhouse gases and decrease the risk of heart disease, cancer and dementia.

• Engaging local governments to help people adapt to life on a warmer planet: By designing a series of creative options that people can use to protect themselves and communities from climate change.
• Eg. Planting mangrove forests to counter growing threats of floods. 
• International coordination and new knowledge generation that can be delivered by an agreed global strategy on climate and health.