The Climate Dividend

 

by Deborah Miarkowska

“Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” So concluded a Lancet-UCL Commission earlier in 2009..1

A systematic appraisal of available evidence showed that the risks from changing patterns of disease, food insecurity, unsafe water and sanitation, damage to human settlements, extreme events, and population growth and migration were far more severe for human health than most observers had understood. The message added an important new dimension to the political debate about how to respond to climate change. The threat was not only environmental and economic; it was directed at life itself.

The health community has now begun to mobilise itself. Academies and colleges of medicine have called on doctors to speak out about climate change.2 Physicians have taken the case for responding to climate change directly to politicians.3 And new organisations, such as the UK’s Climate and Health Council, are working to inform, affirm, advocate, innovate, and disseminate on behalf of health professionals working to address global warming.

A negative reaction

Despite these welcome manoeuvres to emphasise the health dimension of climate change, still the overwhelming impression among the public is that any response to global warming will be negative. Cutting carbon out of our economy will be costly. We will have to drive less, fly less, eat differently, change the way we generate energy, and alter our lifestyles in ways that will limit our freedom to do as we please. The apparent progress we have made in wealth and health since the industrial revolution will stall. Climate change, so it seems, will put human development into reverse. Not surprisingly, this political message is hard to sell to a public already struggling during a time of global financial insecurity.

The co-benefits of intervening on climate change

But, as this latest Series of six papers on the health co-benefits of intervening on climate change shows, there is an important health dividend to be gained by mitigating the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions. These co-benefits for health are insufficiently known. They extend beyond rich nations and reach into low-income and middle-income countries. And they traverse sectors as diverse as household energy, urban transport, electricity generation, agriculture, and short-lived greenhouse pollutants.

This report owes a great deal to a remarkable collaboration between several health and medical institutions-the Wellcome Trust, Royal College of Physicians, National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, National Institute for Health Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Economic and Social Research Council, Academy of Medical Sciences, WHO, and The Lancet. It was prepared very much with the December Copenhagen climate conference in mind. But too much pressure and too many hopes had already been put on this single meeting. By suggesting that Copenhagen is the “last chance” for a binding international climate-change agreement, anything less will seem a failure. Copenhagen is a beginning, not the end.

Complexity, Complexity

The complexity of a global climate agreement is immense. Targets have to be set and agreed domestically. Verification procedures have to be devised. Financial support has to be assembled for poorer nations. Trust between countries has to be fostered. Each of these domains will take time to work out. Copenhagen is a starting pistol marking the beginning of concerted high-level political negotiations. After Copenhagen there can be no turning back. And as these negotiations proceed, health is likely to become an increasingly important concern, not only for a public anxious about the impact of climate-change mitigation policies on their lives, but also for politicians eager to sweeten the climate-change policy pill.

This latest report aims to accelerate political and public assent for large cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. It indicates the contribution of science and public health to one of the greatest predicaments facing human and non-human life. That contribution now needs to be embraced fully by health professionals and medical scientists worldwide.

References

1 Costello A, Abbas M, Allen A, et al. Lancet and University College London Institute for Global Health Commission: managing the health effects of climate change. Lancet 2009; 373: 1693-1733. Full Text | PDF(5852KB) | CrossRef | PubMed
2 Lim V, Stubbs JW, Nahar N, et al. Politicians must heed health effects of climate change. Lancet 2009; 374: 973. Full Text | PDF(50KB) | CrossRef | PubMed
3 Pencheon D, Montgomery H, Gilmore I, et al. Climate needs to change before Copenhagen. Guardian Oct 21, 2009: 31. PubMed

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