WHO Calls for Action to Curb Climate Change

Apr 12, 2022Alex Smith reviews

The World Health Organization, (WHO), states that climate changes pose a grave threat to human and animal health. It urges international collaboration and immediate action on a scale similar to the COVID-19 response.

 “If we don’t take action today on planet health, we are putting our future health at risk. When health is at threat, everything is at danger. That’s what we have learned from COVID-19,” Takeshi Kasai, WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific Region, spoke at a virtual press conference in Manila on World Health Day 7 April.

“Climate crisis is also a health crisis since climate change affects health in many different ways,”Kasai stated, underlining the necessity to design sustainable, climate-resistant platforms for health.

Yearly, 3.5 million people across the WHO Western Pacific Region pass away from avoidable environmental causes like extreme weather events, air pollution or waterborne diseases; and every 14 seconds a person passes away from air pollution in the area. The rise in air pollution is also causing an increase of non-communicable diseases like strokes, lung diseases, and heart disease.

The most severe effects of climate change on human well-being are felt in small Pacific Island developing countries, which have the lowest carbon footprint. According to the WHO, these countries account for two-thirds worldwide of the countries that experience the greatest relative losses from environmental calamities each year.

The Third publication of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report released on April 4^th reveals that controlling warming to about 2 °C still necessitates global greenhouse gas emissions to surge before 2025 and be decreased by a quarter by 2030.

The IPCC report concentrates on decreasing emissions and offers feasible ways in for all the sectors that can keep the possibility of controlling warming to 1.5 °C active.

The global climate footprint is currently made up of around five percent by the health sector. We can do better.

Ifereimi Wakainabete Minister for Health and Medical Services Fiji

Waqainabete claimed that the health industry plays a key role in reducing its emissions and creating effective mitigation and adaptation strategies to deal with the climate change’s effects on health.

Fiji was one of the world’s first nations to release its own national strategies for climate-resistant, environmentally sustainable healthcare services.

This is how we guide our interventions to improve and reduce our environmental footprint in key areas, including water, sanitation and hygiene, energy infrastructure, technology, health workforce, and air pollution.

Ifereimi Wakainabete Minister for Health and Medical Services Fiji

Renzo Guinto, a Filipino physician and public health expert, addressed the WHO event. “We need healthcare that is adaptive to the health impacts of climate change, that bends without breaking, with a ready workforce and stable supplies as we must be the last sector standing when climate disaster strikes.”

While the Philippines is dealing with increasing health risks as the climate crisis worsens, the measures being taken do not address the slow onset of climatic effects, said Renato Reentor Constantino, executive Director of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities.

Constantino quoted WHO projections that the mean yearly temperature in the Philippines could increase by around 3.7 °C between 1990 and 2100 in a high-emissions background.

The projected rise in heat indexes will have an increasing thermal impact on labour, especially for those who work in agriculture, contract arrangements without health coverage, and informal urban services.

Renato Constantino, Executive director, Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities

“Higher temperatures will worsen land and water scarcity, flooding conditions, drought, and displacement, all of which severely affect agricultural production, which in turn will cause more breakdowns in food systems,”Constantino stated that the rising heat will also increase hypertensive symptoms in women.

Despite the urgency, progress towards realizing climate targets is being slowed. “The fundamental challenge is how to move beyond the rhetoric and take actual practical action. The key to that is understanding that action isn’t just needed, but action is also possible,”Mark Jacobs, Pacific technical assistance director and WHO representative for South Pacific, said to SciDev.Net.

“We don’t need to optimistically wait for someone else to come up with a big solution to this. We can and should all be taking our own steps to reduce our own contribution to climate change as individuals, as families, as communities, and as countries,”Jacobs added.

It is expected that climate change will increase the number of deaths annually by 250,000 per year in a business-as usual scenario.

“By putting health and equity at the centre of climate policymaking, governments can deliver policies that garner widespread support and maximise returns on investment,”Jeni Miller, executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance stated this in a media release.

Policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions may also result in cleaner air and water, healthier lifestyles, more liveable cities, better transportation systems, and better health and well-being.

Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance

Observations of the Regional Director during the virtual press conference held on 7 April 2022Play