Date: 18-19 June 2015
Place: Paris, France
This is the central message from an international conference on “Climate, Health, Inequalities: Solutions?” hosted by the French Ministry of Health, in collaboration with WHO. The conference brings together health leaders and practitioners, development agencies, and scientific experts to discuss how to reinforce synergies between health, environmental and sustainable development objectives in the preparations for the forthcoming Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Paris in December 2015.
The conference reviews the evidence for health risks from climate change, and from the polluting energy sources and unsustainable development practices that are causing global warming. Health effects are expected to be more severe for elderly people and people with infirmities or pre-existing medical conditions. The groups who are likely to bear most of the resulting disease burden are children and the poor, especially women.
The major diseases that are most sensitive to climate change – diarrhoea, vector-borne diseases like malaria, and infections associated with undernutrition – are mainly diseases of poverty: For example, the per capita mortality rate from vector-borne diseases is almost 300 times greater in developing nations than in developed regions. They are also particularly diseases of children. 90% of the burden of malaria and diarrhoea, and almost all of the burden of diseases associated with undernutrition, are borne by children aged 5 years or less, mostly in developing countries. These populations have contributed least to the emissions of greenhouse gases that are the main driver of climate change. At the same time, they also suffer the greatest burden of exposure to air pollution from highly polluting fuels, which causes approximately 7 million deaths each year.
Most importantly, the conference also addresses solutions to these challenges. More sustainable and equitable development, including poverty alleviation and strengthening of universal health coverage including preventive public health interventions, would improve health now and reduce vulnerability to ongoing climate change. There is now emerging experience of specific approached to addressing climate risks to health which can build resilience and give effective protection against health risks from heatwaves and other extreme weather events, to infectious diseases, and long-term risks such as food insecurity. In addition, the transition to a green economy, and more sustainable policy choices in sectors such as electricity generation, household energy and transport has the potential to greatly reduce non-communicable disease burdens associated with , for example, air pollution and physical inactivity. Removing subsidies for polluting fuels, and assessing accounting for the health impacts of different energy and development choices would make an important contribution to a healthier, more sustainable and fairer society.