“Climate change is one of the leading threats to human health,” writes Lucy Cassels.
Extreme climate events are increasingly affecting our homes, communities and health, but there is work underway in our region to combat these challenges, writes research fellow Lucy Cassels.
The frequency of cyclones, storms and floods we’re now experiencing here in Aotearoa New Zealand has brought home the fact that extreme climate events are now a part of life.
Recent tragedies caused by extreme weather have jolted our public consciousness in a way that international scientific reports and alerts on the dangers of climate change have not so far managed to do. From Cyclone Gabrielle to our most recent storms, we’ve seen how quickly weather extremes can overwhelm whānau and communities, strain services, and take out key infrastructure.
But what of the other face of climate change — the slow creep of less visible impacts, such as those on our everyday health? What is the cost to people’s lives and wellbeing, and what — apart from mitigation to slow the pace and scale of climate change — can be done here at home to combat this?
Climate touches every aspect of our health
While it’s not as visible as a major storm or cyclone, climate change and the factors driving it are reshaping the everyday conditions that keep people healthy — the air we breathe, the food and water we rely on, the safety of our workplaces and homes.
Last October, New Zealand hosted the world’s largest and most influential climate adaptation gathering, Adaptation Futures, in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Over a week, New Zealand and global experts discussed the impact of climate change on our countries, health, cities, agriculture and more, and considered strategies to help the world adapt. Indigenous leadership, climate impacts on the Pacific, and community‑led responses were key themes of the discussions.
One of the topics that drew a lot of attention was extreme heat, which is on the rise due to climate change.
While New Zealanders may not yet have experienced the same levels of extreme heat now regularly faced by our Australian and Pacific neighbours, deadly heat, as a consequence of climate change, is a health challenge we will also need to face here.
Heat can amplify many existing health conditions, often making them more life-threatening. Heatwaves also increase the risk of heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and premature death, especially for older people, those with chronic illness, and people who work outdoors. Higher temperatures worsen air quality, aggravating asthma and other respiratory conditions, and can aggravate cardiovascular and respiratory disease.
In many parts of the world, extreme heat is making workplaces more dangerous and effectively untenable for sustained labour. Growers in Spain, Portugal, and parts of Southern Europe increasingly harvest grapes and other crops at night to avoid the daytime heat that damages fruit and endangers workers. This may well be the future we also face in the coming years — a warning of what’s to come for New Zealand’s horticultural and construction sectors, to name a few.
Climate change also increases the risk that mosquito-borne diseases will reach our shores in future, including dengue and malaria, which remain problematic in our Pacific neighbourhood. For New Zealanders, the warmer climate could mean not only more mosquito bites but also a higher chance that exotic pathogens arrive and successfully establish here.
There are many other climate-related health impacts that deserve our attention. Bricks and mortar — health infrastructure — are affected when extreme weather damages hospitals and clinics, or takes out the power, water, and communications they depend on to deliver health services to us. Floods and storms also damage roads, impeding access to hospitals and clinics and disrupting transportation and supply chains for vital medicines, oxygen, and other essential supplies. They can wreak havoc on the clean drinking water we require to stay well.
Mental health is another important climate concern. It’s not hard to see the psychological toll of repeated extreme events, as homes and lives are destroyed. These effects are compounded where housing is insecure, incomes are low, or services are already stretched. The list goes on.
What should be done?
That’s a lot to swallow, but there is much that we can do.
A recent forum hosted by the Helen Clark Foundation, featuring leading Pacific and global health expert Professor Sir Collin Tukuitonga of Waipapa Rau, University of Auckland, and Dr Sandro Demaio of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Centre for Environment and Health, discussed what’s being done in our region to prepare for climate impacts on health. Our discussion revealed that much inspiration for health adaptation can be found in our own Pacific neighbourhood. On a mission to Kiribati last year, working with a joint WHO-University of Melbourne team, I saw examples of this in action.
Under its national health adaptation plan, Kiribati’s Ministry of Health and Medical Services is working hard to address climate health challenges. Upgrades are being made to health facilities and clinics on Kiribati’s vulnerable outer islands to protect them from sea-level rise and extreme weather. Surveillance is being ramped up to help detect and respond to water-borne, food-borne, and vector-borne diseases, such as diarrhoea and dengue.
Secure access to fresh, clean water is a critical issue — and Kiribati is putting in place water security and hygiene measures to reduce risk from droughts and saltwater intrusion, as sea levels rise. Working alongside Kiribati’s Environment and Conservation Division team, it was impressive to see the courage, energy and commitment of those putting these essential life-saving measures in place.
This sort of front-footed adaptation and health resilience planning is underway right across the Pacific, and is often leaps and bounds ahead of other systems.
Why? Because Pacific communities in the region are already on the frontline of climate change, experiencing its direct impacts. If it’s not drought and deadly heat, it’s mosquito-borne disease, or the salination of fields and freshwater sources.
Our neighbours haven’t had the luxury of waiting and prevaricating. In that sense, there is a lot that we can learn from the resilience planning of their health systems, whether in Sāmoa, Fiji, Kiribati or elsewhere.
Plans underway here at home
In New Zealand, the Health National Adaptation Plan, or HNAP, sets out how our health system should prepare for and respond to extreme weather, to keep health services running and care for our population.
The HNAP recognises that climate change is one of the leading threats to human health and sets out evidence-based steps to help our health system adapt. There are many practical things that can and must be done. For example, developing heat-health early warning systems, guidance for workplaces, and measures to protect older people and outdoor workers when the barometer is set to rise.
Our health system also needs to ensure continuity plans for hospitals and primary care delivery during extreme weather, for example, when floods and landslips cut off roads and critical supply routes.
All of these things (and many more) are identified in the HNAP as necessary actions for our health system.
Guidance from global authorities, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), indicates that this planning means we’re on the right track. The IPCC says that proactive, well-designed adaptation investments will help countries combat many of the worst impacts of climate change on our health systems. Our country’s HNAP is a well-written, broad and holistic plan, and it deserves the attention of our ministers and the resources to implement it.
Hope ahead
Despite the dangers climate change poses to our health, we’re not sitting ducks. We know what’s required to combat the worst impacts, whether that’s strengthening hospitals or primary-care clinics against flooding, or maintaining emergency reserves of essential medicines and equipment.
As we move forward, what will be needed is the political commitment from New Zealand leaders, both in the Beehive and across the health system, to ensure our national plan is properly funded and implemented. Given the scope of the HNAP, meaningful progress will only be made through cross-agency collaboration and investment.
There’s no certainty about which government will be delivered by the ballot box this November. What is clear, though, is that future governments (of any stripe) must continue to prioritise climate resilience — and health is a good place to start.
These are sensible, precautionary investments that will do much to help us manage the worst impacts of climate change on our health, saving the country’s health budget and our wellbeing well into the future.
Lucy Cassels is a global health and environmental governance specialist, writing as an honorary fellow for the Helen Clark Foundation. A former career diplomat and public servant, she is now based at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, where she is a senior research fellow, researching health and climate issues in the Pacific region. She was also recently appointed an honorary senior research fellow at Te Poutoko Ora a Kiwa (Centre for Pacific and Global Health) at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland.
The post Lessons from the Pacific for a warming Aotearoa appeared first on E-Tangata.
From E-Tangata via This RSS Feed.