The climate crisis is a health crisis C
By Vanessa Kerry, WHO Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health
limate change is an existential threat to humanity. Up to 3.3 billion people globally are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Collectively, we face an unknown future defined by increased extreme weather. Decades of inaction have led us to this moment. Elevations in global greenhouse gas emissions are fuelling extreme heat, accelerating changes in our environment, and harming our global biodiversity. We too often fail to remember, however, that the climate crisis is a health crisis. Climate change is killing us. According to the World Health Organization, one in four deaths today is attributable to a preventable environmental cause. Seven million people a year die from air pollution – more than died in the entire Covid-19 pandemic globally. Over the next decade, we will see an additional 250,000 deaths per year and increased morbidity for millions of people suffering as a result of the climate’s amplification of non-communicable disease, vector-borne disease, maternal and neonatal emergencies, and mental illness. Climate change not only brings increased deaths. It destroys livelihoods. Extreme heat in India – where heat-related deaths increased 55% between 2017 and 2021 – resulted in a loss of 167.2 billion potential labour hours in 2021 alone, equivalent to about 5.4% of the country’s gross domestic product. These economic losses most frequently affect those already vulnerable, accelerating pre-existing inequities and driving even further gaps in the poor’s ability to access needed resources. The World Bank estimates that up to 132 million people around the world will enter poverty by 2030 as a direct result of the health impacts of climate change.
The world is standing on a precipice that will determine the future of humanity’s survival. At the crux of the climate and health nexus is a choice to change the status quo, ending the pandemic of expedient and poor choices and understanding that investments in a stronger health system are savings, not costs
OVERWHELMED SYSTEMS
As the climate and health crisis
worsens, our already stressed health systems are increasingly overwhelmed. Events, such as the recent floods in Pakistan and Cyclone
Freddy in Southern Africa, show how climate change exploits the already well known cracks in our healthcare systems – not only destroying physical
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Health: A Political Choice – From Fragmentation to Integration
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