Pachamama or Mother Earth, revered by the indigenous people of the Andes to this day, is considered to be a benevolent deity that presides over planting and harvesting and who, through her creative power, sustains life. This belief system also holds that when people damage Mother Earth, problems arise because her life cycles are affected.
Rapid climate change—caused by the injurious impact of man-made actions on the environment—has become a priority issue in the 21st century since it has the potential to negatively impact the economic and social development of countries across the world. While solid scientific evidence on climate change has led to heightened awareness about this challenge in recent years, policy action at the international level has not lived up to expectations.
Uncontrolled, man-made carbon emissions, which climbed to a new record of 30 billion tons worldwide in 2010, are at the core of the climate change threat. Curbing this trend is not only a daunting task that requires sophisticated technical solutions, but its complexity is intensified by disagreements among countries on the size of the problem and what to do about it. In large measure, entrenched political and economic interests are behind these disagreements, which have slowed down progress to address this global challenge.
Climate change should matter to all of us. Changing weather patterns, including more frequent extreme climate events (e.g., the 13 warmest years on record have been in the last 15 years), sea level rise (e.g., while global sea level rose about 17 centimeters in the last century, the rate in the last decade is nearly double that of the last century), and natural disasters (e.g. in some regions the number of particularly large hurricanes has increased), negatively impact the lives, health conditions, and well-being of people—the raison d’être of economic and social development.
A landmark 2009 report by The Lancet Commission documented how climate change over the coming decades could have a disastrous effect on health conditions across the world. There are both direct and indirect health threats through changing patterns of disease, water and food insecurity, vulnerable shelter and human settlements, extreme climatic events, and population growth and migration. But, as this report highlighted, while vector-borne diseases will expand their reach and death toll as a result of climate change, the indirect effects on potable water, food security, and extreme climatic events are likely to have the biggest negative effect on health conditions.
If the negative impacts of climate change are not mitigated, they will only exacerbate existing global health inequities, particularly affecting the poorest and less developed countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa. This will help perpetuate poverty across generations, increase malnutrition and ill health, and cause premature mortality, undermining competitiveness, employment and wealth creation across countries. And this, in turn, has the potential to aggravate social tensions and increase the risk of political unrest.
Call for Policy Action
Not everything is bleak however. As documented in a recent World Bank report, Climate-Smart Development, prepared in advance of the U.N. Secretary General’s Climate Summit in September 2014, if public policies and market- based approaches that reduce emissions and other short-lived climate pollutants are implemented, they can have clear and measurable economic, health, and other social benefits.
Case studies prepared for the report simulate benefits to be realized from the application of key measures in six regions or countries (the United States, China, the European Union, India, Mexico, and Brazil) and the impact on global GDP. These studies show that regulations, taxes, and incentives to stimulate a shift to clean transport, improved industrial energy efficiency, and more energy-efficient buildings and appliances would generate annual benefits by 2030 that include an estimated GDP growth of between $1.8 and $2.6 trillion.
The report also estimates that approximately 94,000 premature pollution-related deaths could be avoided, and that these measures would avoid production of 8.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e) emissions and save almost 16 billion kilowatt-hours of energy—a savings roughly equivalent to taking 2 billion cars off the road.
It should be clear, therefore, that action on climate change — and control of its potential negative health consequences — will require adoption and adaptation of multisectoral approaches, coupled with participation, collaboration, and consensus among governments, communities, individuals, businesses, and international organizations. Such collaboration should result in policies and market-based approaches aimed at reducing carbon emissions and other heat-trapping gases that we are adding to the atmosphere, particularly in fast-growing cities, which account for two-thirds of energy demands and emissions.
Public Health Platforms
In the health sector, it is imperative that we move beyond biological and medical concepts of health and disease and focus on the social determinants of health to better understand the health risks associated with climate change and the possible response of the health sector to this phenomenon.
We should also be ready to collaborate on multi-sector economic analysis to better illustrate, for example, the environmental and health benefits of shifting behaviors to use public transport systems and advanced cook stoves, and to walking and cycling, by adopting road safety measures to protect the safety of pedestrians and bicycle riders on city roads.
To help reduce vulnerability and build resilience in countries, it is important that institutions such as the World Bank , working in tandem with other agencies such as the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), redouble support to countries to develop and strengthen essential public health platforms (e.g. surveillance systems and epidemiological intelligence capacity) to anticipate, prevent, and deal with adverse health outcomes associated with climate change.
Although tackling climate change often seems to be an insurmountable challenge, we should be optimistic that the tide will turn, much as we witnessed in the last decade in relation to HIV/AIDS.
With committed political leadership at the highest level of government, active social movements pressing for action, new scientific and technological developments adapted to local realities, and sustained allocation of resources for action over the medium term, it will be possible to modify human activity which is contributing to global warming and its negative impact on public health and development.
And if we succeed, Mother Earth will begin to be cured, and the natural course of climate restored.
Follow the World Bank health team on Twitter: @worldbankhealth
Related
The Lancet Commission: Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change (2009)
World Bank Report: Climate-Smart Development
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Join the Conversation
Thank you for this blog. I cannot see "moving towards sustainable healthy diets" as one of the policy options in the list. Is there any reason for not to include it in the report ? It would help to reduce emissions and prevent diet-related diseases.
It's true as you say that diseases can spread more when climate changes. There is also the threat from increasing ice, just reported two days ago. Average global temperatures are now at a standstill for 17 years, notincreasing notwithstanding the rapid accumulation of CO2 emissions. The models are being adapted so CO2 lags temperature as it did historically. That probably explains the record growth... of ice. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2681829/Global-warming-latest-Amount-Antarctic-sea-ice-hits-new-record-high.html is the health system prepared for coninuing trend like this? This wll have high adapting costs and health costs. Ice reduces availlable drinking water directly and also reduces food availability because oj lower yields. Fall in nutrition wll lead to worse population health, as the author pointsout. Specifying the timeframes for these profound changes is important. I hope the World Bank can shed light on the timeframes so health system investments are made accordingly and especially with a view toward Universal Health Coverage by goal for 2050.
Read more Read lessThanks for the blog, and for citing our report on Climate Smart Development. The medical and climate science communities are both beginning to see the inter-connectedness of climate change and health. For the first time the fifth assessment report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this year devoted a chapter to this topic, acknowledging a high level of confidence in adverse climate-health... impacts in the future. They highlight three basic pathways of impact: i) Direct impacts, which relate primarily to changes in the frequency of extreme weather including heat, drought, and heavy rain; ii) Effects mediated through natural systems, for example, disease vectors, water-borne diseases, and air pollution; and iii) Effects heavily mediated by human systems, for example, occupational impacts, undernutrition, and mental stress. On the medical side the WHO is getting increasingly active on this agenda. The World Health Assembly (WHA) comprising 193 countries passed a landmark resolution on climate and health in May 2008 calling for (i) strengthening the evidence base; (ii) building health system capacity to help countries address both gradual changes and sudden shocks; and (iii) scaling up outreach and advocacy. In August 2014, the WHO will convene a first-ever Climate and Health summit, at which Ministries or Health and a diverse range of public and private stakeholders will be represented. Within the World Bank, we have also been increasing looking at climate-health linkages. Most of the work has been in the form of analytical products. We are now beginning to see operational demand for support from client countries.
Read more Read lessMany thanks Sameer for your comments and information. In the new era of the Global Practices, we, at the WBG, now have a golden opportunity to add value in the support that we provide to countries by working as multidisciplinary and multisector teams geared to help address problems and their social and economic determinats. The time to move beyond individual sector issues and projects has arrived!
Climate change, health consequences and the implications of these new scenario in medicines use and consumption... It seems plausible that in the forthcoming years (or decades), there will be an increase in the incidence of cancer, respiratory diseases, skin disorders, (new) infections, and also an increase in psychiatric disorders associated with the growing incertitude and the evolution of the present... social model. So, new anticancer drugs, antibiotics and medicines for psychiatric and neurological disorders will be necessary... At the same time, the drug companies' pipelines seem to be almost empty (except for the new biological products). Additionally, these new available options are extremely expensive. An interesting and worrying topic, that of the consequences of the climate change on public health. Sometimes I ask myself if it would be possible to disentangle the World's present complexity in order to come back to Pachamama's simplicity. Of course, this is not easy to solve, and perhaps some solutions would be inconvenient in many aspects. What seem clear is that we have to analyze the problem and face it!
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