The World Health Organization (WHO) has set the theme of this year's World Health Day as climate change, emphasizing the importance of health problems caused by climate change. The World Health Organization (WHO) has already announced that 160,000 people worldwide die every year due to climate change. Estimated deaths due to heat waves, natural disasters, and infectious diseases related to climate change.
However, this estimate is highly likely to be underestimated, as there are still many aspects of health damage caused by climate change that have not been discovered scientifically. In addition, considering that global warming will become more severe in the future, the scale of health damage caused by climate change is expected to be much greater than the current forecast.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), recognizing that climate change is an issue affecting the world and requires a global joint effort more than any other problem, the World Meteorological Organization The Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) are the main international organizations formed in 1988.
The IPCC presents scientific facts, impacts, future forecasts, and countermeasures related to climate change through its four reports.
In the IPCC 4th report published in 2007, the global temperature has increased by 0.74 °C over the past 100 years, and it is predicted that the temperature will increase from 1.8 °C to 6.4 °C over the next 100 years. In the 3rd report in 2001, it has risen by 0.6 ℃ over the past 100 years and predicted to rise by 1.4 ~ 5.8 ℃ more over the next 100 years, showing that the global temperature is rising more rapidly than the previous forecast.
The rate of global temperature increase in the second half of the 20th century is a very rapid change that cannot be found in the past human history. As the temperature rose after the end of the Ice Age, farming became possible, and thus humans were able to develop various civilizations.
Contrary to the imagination of ordinary people, the temperature increase that brought about such a dramatic change was about 4 °C. Considering this point, it is easy to understand that the range of temperature change of 1.8 °C to 6.4 °C that will occur within the next century is a level that can have a huge impact on mankind.
This temperature rise is understood to be due to an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases. Including carbon dioxide, and is a cause of various global changes.
The increase in temperature causes changes in weather patterns such as an increase in the frequency of heat waves, a rise in sea level, an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather disasters, and precipitation. Changes in migration, economy, etc. occur. As such, climate change directly or indirectly affects people's lives and further health.
These climate change and health impacts are expected to increase gradually in all countries and regions, although they vary in size. The magnitude of the impact may be at a level that the global community can respond to, or it may be at a fatal level that cannot be tolerated, depending on the level of future temperature rise.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths due to a heat wave unprecedented in European history in 2003 and the devastating damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in the Louisiana area of the United States in 2005 show that even developed countries are not safe from climate change.
The way the international community has responded to climate change so far has been mainly related to international agreements such as the Kyoto Agreement for the reduction of greenhouse gases, which are the cause of climate change, and measures to reduce greenhouse gases.
However, in recent years, awareness of the importance of adaptation to predict damage caused by climate change and establishing countermeasures has been increasing.
Reducing greenhouse gases is an important task in terms of eliminating the cause, but it is delayed due to the realistic interests of the international community, and even if greenhouse gas emissions are significantly reduced in the future, the already appearing climate change is expected to continue for a considerable period of time.
The IPCC report also urges the establishment of adaptation measures by confirming the evidence of health effects through the review of scientific research on the health effects of climate change. The IPCC 3rd report describes the health effects of climate change by dividing it into five areas: heat stress, extreme events and weather disasters, air pollution, infectious diseases, and coastal issues.
In addition, it deals with health problems caused by seawater problems, food production and nutrition, and social and economic problems.
The 4th IPCC report predicted future impacts by sector and region using climate change prediction models. In terms of health, major impacts include malnutrition, an increase
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