The Lancet Countdown team is a group of over 120 leading experts on climate, public health, economy, and political science — among others — who have committed to monitoring climate change, particularly its impact on global health.
Since 2015, the year of the Paris Agreement, the experts affiliated with the Lancet Countdown commission have published yearly reportsTrusted Source assessing this situation and keeping signatory governments and decision-makers accountable for the commitments they have taken on following the Agreement.
The latest report, which appeared in The LancetTrusted Source in October 2021, records “deepening inequities” across all regions as global heating remains a concern. The report discusses the impact of climate change in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it emphasizes the concern caused by extreme heat events and related natural disasters that have occurred over the past 2 years.
Among the issues outlined in the Lancet Countdown report 2021, there is the impact of climate change on the livelihood of communities around the world, its direct and indirect effect on mental and physical health, and the way in which it contributes to the spread of infectious diseases.
These findings largely coincide with those outlined by another set of landmark reports on climate change — those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
According to the IPCC 2022 reports, at present, extreme weather events caused by human action are surpassing the resilience of some ecological and human systems, sometimes with irreversible effects.
The reports show that weather extremes related to climate change have affected the productivity of various food sectors — including agricultural, forestry, and fishery sectors — around the world, thus exacerbating food insecurity.
They also emphasize the impact of climate change on mental health, and the ways in which it contributes to the spread of vector-borne communicable diseases.
In our latest installment of the In Conversation podcast, we discuss these aspects at length with two key experts. One of them is Prof. David Pencheon, honorary professor of health and sustainable development at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and founder of the Sustainable Development Unit for National Health Services England and Public Health England.
Our other interviewee is Dr. Marina Romanello, a research fellow at the University College London Institute for Global Health, research director of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, and one of the co-authors of the latest Lancet Countdown reports.
According to the Lancet Countdown report 2021, “[t]he world is now 1.2 [degrees Celsius] warmer than in the pre-industrial period (1850–1900),” with the past few years recorded as the hottest yet — 2016 has seen the highest levels of heat around the world.
The IPCC reports 2022 record the current global heat level as even higher, placing it at 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter compared with the pre-industrial period.
According to data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), most of the global heating has occurred abruptly over the past 40 years as a result of human activity that has led to an increase in greenhouse gas levels.
“[G]reenhouse gases that have been accumulating in the atmosphere due to human activity are gases like carbon dioxide [and] methane. And what these gases do is [that they] basically absorb the heat, and they don’t allow heat that comes from the Sun into the Earth [to] be reflected back into space,” Dr. Romanello explained.
But what does this mean for health? For one, climate change puts in motion a complex “domino effect” that ultimately impacts people’s livelihoods, their access to food security, and to clean water, all of which are crucial to human health.
One example is that of melting glaciers. Research published in NatureTrusted Source in 2021 confirms that glaciers, melting due to the steady rise in global temperatures, have driven approximately 21% of the rise in sea levels over the previous 20 years.
Moreover, rising sea levels also increase the risk of catastrophic floodsTrusted Source that endanger the lives of those residing in coastal areas.
The IPCC reports 2022 also emphasize the ways in which global heating has impacted agricultural productivity over the past 50 years, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, which were already struggling with food insecurity. According to IPCC data:
Dr. Marinello also stressed the impact of climate change on water and food security, noting that the people who are likely to be most affected are those who are already facing these issues in the first place.
“I think that one of the things that we get more worried about when we think about climate change is precisely food and water insecurity, especially because the most vulnerable in the world are at such increased level of risk from climate change that [it] adds on top of their already pretty frail food and water systems,” she told us.
“We’re seeing, on the one hand, changed precipitation patterns with increased floodings, increased droughts in different areas, we see extreme weather events that also lead to crop failure, […] all of that undermining not only crop productivity, but also crop supply chains and food supply chains,” she noted.
“And on the other hand, with the extreme heat exposure, we’re already seeing that that starts undermining crop productivity directly as well by changing the maturation times of different crops. So that also is posing limits on […] food productivity,” stressed Dr. Romanello.
You must be logged in to post a comment.