Adapting to the health impacts of climate change in a sustainable manner

Abstract

The climate is changing and this poses significant threats to human health. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing Pacific Island countries and territories due to their unique geophysical features, and their social, economic and cultural characteristics. The Pacific region also faces challenges with widely dispersed populations, limited resources and fragmented health systems. Over the past few years, there has been a substantial increase in international aid for health activities aimed at adapting to the threats of climate change. This funding needs to be used strategically to ensure an effective approach to reducing the health risk from climate change. Respecting the principles of development effectiveness will result in more effective and sustainable adaptation, in particular, 1) processes should be owned and driven by local communities, 2) investments should be aligned with existing national priorities and policies, and 3) existing systems must not be ignored, but rather expanded upon and reinforced.

Globalization and Health: developing the journal to advance the field

“…Research topics explored climate-sensitive health investments [19] and sustainable community level interventions [20], both aligned to the environmental protection policy level in Labonte and Torgerson’s framework [2]. …”

Harnessing instability as an opportunity for health system strengthening: A review of health system resilience

“…As such, resilient health systems must be equipped with robust and interoperable information systems that constitute tools to enhance absorptive, adaptive, and transformative learning capacity and to facilitate the development of effective, evidence-based multi-sectoral responses. 1,27,28,32,38,[49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60] From a financial perspective, the resilience and adaptability of a system to emerging needs and instability hinges on its capacity to mobilize funds in an expedient and equitable manner, 14,29,46,50,54,60,61 and funders' willingness to invest in broader health system strengthening efforts. 28,31,35,52,62 Mobilizing investments in health system resilience before, during, and after instability can ensure that the system is prepared to identify and respond to threats in a timely manner, so as to avoid escalation and the manifestation of severe consequences.…”

Towards Improved Linkage of Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation in Health: A Review

“…As the Sendai Framework has broadened the definition of hazards to include epidemics and pandemics as part of an all-hazard approach to DRR [ 6 , 13 , 14 , 16 , 40 , 44 ], climate-sensitive diseases emerge as a potential area for overlap between DRR and CCA in health. Furthermore, some categories of climate change impacts, such as heatwaves, are not often classified as hazards associated with disasters within climate change discourse [ 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 ]. As DRR has expanded the definition of disasters to now incorporate slow-onset stressors such as drought there will be increasing overlap in the implementation of DRR and CCA [ 88 ].…”

“…This shared learning will strengthen the rigor, robustness, effectiveness and efficiency in addressing climate change and disaster risks long-term [ 16 , 60 , 63 , 80 , 108 , 109 ]. For example, informing disaster risk with the latest climate knowledge and adaptation expertise has been suggested in broader DRR and CCA strategies and is also applicable in health [ 5 , 86 , 110 , 111 ]. This is particularly pertinent as DRR needs to shift to a long-term risk prevention approach to address the short- and long-term risks associated with climate change [ 5 , 6 , 16 , 60 , 63 , 80 , 108 ].…”