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Friday 25 January 2008

RAPID ROUNDUP: Climate change poses a huge threat to human health – experts respond

An article published in the British Medical Journal describes how climate change will have a huge impact on human health and that bold environmental policy decisions are needed now to protect the world’s population. Written by Professor Tony McMichael from the Australian National University, the paper describes the threat of climate change and the implications it will have for health inequalities, social policy and the health sector.

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. If you wish to speak to one of these or another expert, contact the AusSMC on 08 8207 7415.


Professor Tony McMichael is an NHMRC Australia Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH) at The Australian National University. He is co-author of this paper.

“This will have adverse health effects in all populations, particularly in geographically vulnerable and resource-poor regions.While we embark on more rapid reduction of emissions to avert future climate change, we must also manage the now unavoidable health risks from current and pending climate change. The health sector must take the lead in this, and will need to work closely with many other sectors.”

Dr Paul Beggs is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Environmental and Life Sciences at Macquarie University

“Professor McMichael has worked tirelessly for many years to highlight the links between global environmental change and human health. He, like the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, correctly points out the unfair burden of adverse health impacts in developing countries and regions such as Africa. However, we must recognise that such impacts will also occur in developed countries such as Australia. Impacts of climate change on plant allergens such as pollen could have considerable implications in countries with high asthma rates like Australia. At last Australia has acted responsibly by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Again, as McMichael makes clear, our response to issues such as climate change must be two-fold: to mitigate global environmental change, and to adapt to existing and projected future changes.”

Professor Barry Brook is Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide.

"Importantly, McMichael and colleagues' essay serves to emphasise the inextricable link between human wellbeing and 'environmental health'. Humans are rapidly degrading the Earth's natural capital, via the synergies of climate change, tropical deforestation and changed land use, diversion of freshwater flows, pollution and exhaustion of soils through intensive agriculture. These critical drivers of global change were reviewed in detail by the little-cited, yet incredibly important, 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment - the ecological equivalent of the Intergovernmental Assessment on Climate Change Assessment Report. The key point is this - without its life support system intact, humanity's health - be it the health of individuals, societies or global economies - will be severely and perhaps irreparably compromised during this century and beyond. If environmental concerns continue to be neglected in the short-term myopic pursuit of 'growth at all costs', then a future world will inevitably be a far nastier, more hostile and less biologically rich one in which to live".

Professor Kevin Parton is Head of the Orange Campus and the School of Rural Management at Charles Sturt University

“This is a valuable contribution that alerts us to the clear (but usually unacknowledged) link between climate change and health. I agree with the main conclusions – the health risks are massive, and the best way to mitigate them is to minimise the extent of climate change. I also concur that health professionals are well placed to be a politically influential group in getting more prominence for climate change as a health issue. I would go even further and emphasise that, properly defined in its broadest sense, global community health is the climate change issue. According to this definition, a good global community health outcome would comprise environmental sustainability together with adequate levels of social conditions and relationships, economic wealth, and human health for all peoples.

“I also think that instead of just pointing out that diseases such as malaria in sub-Saharan Africa would be far worse following climate change, the authors could have emphasised that this means that we should do more right now about expanding the programs directed towards eradicating such diseases.”