Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | E | Environmental Health Perspectives

An approach for assessing human health vulnerability and public health interventions to adapt to climate change.

Article Excerpt
Assessments of the potential human health impacts of climate change are needed to inform the development of adaptation strategies, policies, and measures to lessen projected adverse impacts. We developed methods for country-level assessments to help policy makers make evidence-based decisions to increase resilience to current and future climates, and to provide information for national communications to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The steps in an assessment should include the following: a) determine the scope of the assessment; b) describe the current distribution and burden of climate-sensitive health determinants and outcomes; c) identify and describe current strategies, policies, and measures designed to reduce the burden of climate-sensitive health determinants and outcomes; d) review the health implications of the potential impacts of climate variability and change in other sectors; e) estimate the future potential health impacts using scenarios of future changes in climate, socioeconomic, and other factors; f) synthesize the results; and g) identify additional adaptation policies and measures to reduce potential negative health impacts. Key issues for ensuring that an assessment is informative, timely, and useful include stakeholder involvement, an adequate management structure, and a communication strategy. Key words: adaptation, climate change, climate variability, human health methods, vulnerability. Environ Health Perspect 114:1930-1934 (2006). doi:10.1289/ehp.8430 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 11 July 2006]

**********

Over the past decade, it has become clear that the world's climate is changing. In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities (Albritton and Meiro Filho 2001). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected that the global mean temperature of the earth would increase by the end of the 21st century by between 1.4 and 5.8[degrees]C. Global precipitation patterns will also change. This projected rate of warming is much faster than the observed changes during the 20th century and is very likely to be without precedent during at least the last 10,000 years (Albritton and Meiro Filho 2001).

The primary international response to control greenhouse gas emissions is the Kyoto Protocol negotiated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 2005). The text of the protocol was adopted at the third session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. Because of the long lifetime of some greenhouse gases and the inherent inertia in the climate system, even full compliance with the Kyoto protocol means that adaptation to climate change will be required for at least several decades (Albritton and Meiro Filho 2001). Recent research and policy attention has therefore focused on assessments of potential vulnerabilities and identification of adaptation strategies, policies, and measures (Lim and Spanger-Siegfried 2004; Willows and Connell 2003).

Three broad categories of health impacts are associated with climatic conditions: impacts that are directly related to weather/climate, impacts that result from environmental changes that occur in response to climatic change, and impacts resulting from consequences of climate-induced economic dislocation, environmental decline, and conflict (McMichael et al. 2001). Changes in the frequency and intensity of heat events and extreme rainfall events (i.e., floods and droughts) will directly affect population health. Indirect impacts will occur through changes in the range and intensity of infectious diseases and food- and waterborne diseases, and changes in the prevalence of diseases associated with air pollutants and aeroallergens.

Concerns about climate change have led international agencies, nongovernmental and regional institutions, and national organizations to undertake vulnerability and adaptation assessments. Few national communications and other UNFCCC-related assessments in low-income countries and economies in transition have addressed climate change--related health impacts in any detail because of limited data availability and a lack of guidance on assessment methods (Kovats et al. 2003a). To provide such guidance, and in response to the need to develop a flexible approach for country-driven health assessments, we developed a framework using familiar methods to evaluate the impacts of climate variability and change, to identify vulnerable populations, and to assess adaptation policies and measures (Kovats et al. 2003b). The assessment process is stakeholder driven and, as such, is designed to focus on local environmental and health priorities.

In this article we first define vulnerability and adaptation in the context of climate change. We next describe the steps in a vulnerability and adaptation assessment. Third, we discuss issues related to the process of conducting an assessment. We then expand on using risk management to address climate change--related health risks. A starting point for many climate change assessments should be evaluation of how populations currently cope with climate variability, particularly weather extremes such as floods, droughts, and heat events, to indicate where additional interventions are needed. Improving the capacity to cope with current climate variability will likely increase resilience to climate change.

The remaining articles in this mini-monograph describe completed assessments in small island states (Ebi et al. 2006), Portugal (Casimiro et al. 2006), Cuba (Ortiz Bulto et al. 2006), and the indigenous populations in Canada (Furgal and Seguin 2006). In addition, Campbell-Lendrum and Woodruff (2006) describe methods that the World Health Organization (WHO) use to estimate the attributable burden of health determinants and outcomes due to climate change.

Vulnerability and Adaptation

Assessing the potential health impacts of climate variability and change requires understanding both the vulnerability of a population and its capacity to respond to new conditions.

Human health...