Climate Solutions Double as Health Interventions

Abstract

The climate crisis threatens to exacerbate numerous climate-sensitive health risks, including heatwave mortality, malnutrition from reduced crop yields, water- and vector-borne infectious diseases, and respiratory illness from smog, ozone, allergenic pollen, and wildfires. Recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stress the urgent need for action to mitigate climate change, underscoring the need for more scientific assessment of the benefits of climate action for health and wellbeing. Project Drawdown has analyzed more than 80 solutions to address climate change, building on existing technologies and practices, that could be scaled to collectively limit warming to between 1.5° and 2 °C above preindustrial levels. The solutions span nine major sectors and are aggregated into three groups: reducing the sources of emissions, maintaining and enhancing carbon sinks, and addressing social inequities. Here we present an overview of how climate solutions in these three areas can benefit human health through improved air quality, increased physical activity, healthier diets, reduced risk of infectious disease, and improved sexual and reproductive health, and universal education. We find that the health benefits of a low-carbon society are more substantial and more numerous than previously realized and should be central to policies addressing climate change. Much of the existing literature focuses on health effects in high-income countries, however, and more research is needed on health and equity implications of climate solutions, especially in the Global South. We conclude that adding the myriad health benefits across multiple climate change solutions can likely add impetus to move climate policies faster and further.

The Causes and Role of Antinatalism in Poland in the Context of Climate Change, Obstetric Care, and Mental Health

“…Simultaneously, it is also proven that voluntary family planning can influence and benefit climate change, mostly through slowing future population growth, especially in low- and middle-income countries [ 47 ]; thus, the connection between birth rate and climate change is indisputable.…”

Cognitive Interview Validation of a Novel Household Hazard Vulnerability Assessment Instrument

“…This work is timely and important to inform public health and clinical climate change vulnerability assessments and disaster planning (48). Our work is also crucial to developing climate change equity interventions focused on health and education(49), such as enhancing precision in the direct provision of disaster preparedness supplies or household disaster planning services to those identified as most at-risk or affected.…”

Communication research to improve engagement with climate change and human health: A review

“…Building enduring public and political will for climate and health solutions may therefore be the most important-and promising-public health objective for the next several decades. Health professionals have long intuited that acknowledging and promoting the human health benefits of climate solutions as "co-benefits" of climate action would help advance this objective (16)(17)(18)(19). Social science research conducted over the past decade has confirmed this intuition and refined it.…”

“…Many of the actions in each of these categories also produce health benefits and, if done right, equity benefits ( 15 ). Therefore, climate solutions have “co-benefits” that can quickly improve public health and wellbeing while also helping to stabilize the climate ( 16 – 19 ). Table 1 provides examples of the types of climate solutions and adaptation measures and their associated climate and health benefits.…”

“…For example, promoting plant-based diets and reducing food waste can also reduce emissions and enhance human health ( 26 ). Similarly, increasing access to family planning resources and educating girls can help slow future population growth and emission rates while also improving gender equality, access to education, and reproductive healthcare ( 19 , 21 ).…”