Mitigating climate impact on health

Climate crisis threatens progress in development, global health and poverty reduction and it widens health inequality. It affects social and environmental determinants of health. The climate crisis encompasses warming temperature, increases in the rate or intensity of extreme weather events and rising sea levels. Eventually, it threatens people’s health by affecting the air that people breathe, the water that people drink and the food that people eat.

The severity of health risks of a country depends on the ability of national and local public health and safety systems to address the changing threats. In Bangladesh, the health sector has limited expertise on climate change and lacks the capacity to fully respond to, recover from and adapt to climate-related shocks and stresses in ensuring essential health services.

To outline the impact of climate change on health,

Warmer average temperatures can lead to an increase in heat-related death and can worsen air quality, which can lead to asthma attacks and other respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Increases in the frequency or severity of extreme weather events can affect human health in a number of ways — damaging roads and bridges and, thus, disrupting access to hospital and pharmacies and interrupting communication, utility, and health care services. It can also worsen mental health impact such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

In addition, people with disabilities may also be disproportionally affected if they are unable to access evacuation routes, have difficulty in understanding or receiving warnings of impending danger, or have limited ability to communicate their needs. Climate change and the direct impact of a higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the air affects food safety and nutrition. A higher air temperature can increase cases of bacteria-related food poisoning because bacteria grow more rapidly in a warm environment. A higher sea surface temperature can lead to higher mercury concentrations in seafood and an increase in extreme weather events can contaminate the food chain through storm water run-off.

Extreme events such as flooding and drought create challenges for food distribution if roads and waterways are damaged or become inaccessible. Experiencing an extreme weather event can cause stress and other mental health consequences, particularly when people lose their loved relatives and friends and their houses. However, changes in temperature and precipitation, as well as droughts and floods, will affect agricultural yields and production.

However, such impact can be minimised by adopting some national and local policies. Vulnerability and adaptation assessment needs to be done to asses which portion of the population and districts are most vulnerable to health impact as well as the capacity of national and local current healthcare systems to manage the impact. After assessments, policy briefs can be prepared to mainstream health and climate change issues into policies and plans and to provide a more comprehensive mitigation outline. Communication material and strategy needs to be developed to improve climate resilience of communities. Public health advisories on extreme weather events need to be translated in local languages.

A national health adaptation plan needs to be developed with strong policies that ensure resilience and adaptive capacity of the healthcare system. The health and family welfare ministry can take the lead role in this regard. Likewise, climate change and health issues should be included in the curriculum in several health trainings. Moreover, reducing emissions of greenhouse gases through better transport, food and energy-use choices can result in improved health, particularly through reduced air pollution.

Moreover, public health adaptation strategies for climate change can be formulated and implemented through direct urban planning policy and practice. The establishment of urban forestry, tree, and landscape programmes can help to build healthy cities. The government can give grants to communities and organisations that promote or maintain urban forests. Local administrations should also promote environment-friendly technologies for construction. The authorities can add urban heat island mitigation strategies in policies and regulations, ranging from purchasing guidelines to building codes.

Urban planners can also impose the zoning code to promote heat island mitigation strategies. Zoning code regulations generally dictate functions for an area, building height and bulk, population density, and parking requirements. It can help in various ways. For example, the adoption of parking lot shading requirements as part of zoning codes can minimise the heat island effect. Introduction of green building codes and standards can place a high priority on human and environmental health and resource conservation over the life cycle of a building. Many countries and cities have adopted green building programmes or standards that capture heat island reduction strategies.

Moreover, building codes set standards for construction, modification, and repair of buildings and other structures. An energy code is a portion of the building code that relates to energy usage and conservation requirements and standards. Some cities and countries have begun including cool roofing in their building codes because of its potential to save energy.

However, the engagement of communities in the promotion of mitigation strategies to combat the impact of climate change on health is crucial. Community awareness raising programmes, coupled with incentives and awards, can be an effective tool for community engagement. Some outreach programmes by can be designed for awareness creation. Even so, incentives and awards from the government and other organisations can be an effective way to spur individual heat island reduction actions. Incentives may include below-market loans, tax breaks, product rebates and grants.

*Md Mahmud Hassan Talukdar is an urban planner, policy researcher and development professional