E-LIBRARY - CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate change & human health: Impact & adaptation issues for New Zealand
November 29, 2015
Adaptation to climate change is important and necessary because climate change is already happening and substantial impacts in the future are inevitable. Successful adaptation will require individual as well as collective action at the community, national and international level in order to reduce the direct and indirect impacts on health. This paper briefly summarises the likely impacts of climate change on health, globally, but focuses on adaptive measures that might be undertaken in New Zealand.
Climate change will have a wide variety of health impacts; many are predictable but some not. Higher maximum temperatures will lead to water shortages, occupational health concerns for outdoor workers, increased heat-related deaths and illnesses, and contribute to an extended range of some pest and disease vectors.
In some areas, there will be increased droughts leading to forest fires, increasing hospital admissions, while in other areas more intense rainfall will lead to mudslides, flooding and contaminated water supplies. More intense weather events are likely to increase the risk of infectious disease epidemics and the erosion of low-lying and coastal land. Indirect effects of climate change, such as mental health problems, are likely to occur from economic instability and forced migration.
Adaptation policies should be as equitable as possible, because some groups in society have less knowledge and less social, human and financial capital with which to adapt. If proposed policies are considered equitable and fair, they are likely to be more generally acceptable. Because of existing socio-economic disadvantages, some groups will require special consideration and deliberate support by local and central government.
Both low and high carbon world scenarios require major adaptation measures in key infrastructure such as housing and the supply of drinking water and energy. But in a high-carbon world scenario, New Zealand could become a ‘lifeboat’ to those living in more vulnerable South Pacific countries who are displaced by the impacts of climate change, and the scale of health and social problems to be faced by New Zealanders could become considerably more serious.
Tags : Cllimate Change , Health
