Presentation for the World Committee for lifelong learning (CMA) 4th conference debate at the Cite Des Metiers, Paris, June 22nd 2022 20220622 CMA middletonj climate change and health long version.pptx

1. Climate change as a high risk factor for
health in decades to come
Professor John Middleton
President, Association of Schools of Public
Health in the European Region

5. Carbon dioxide – a legacy for future generations, 15 to 40% of emitted
CO2 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/

6. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown: food insecurity, conflict,
migration
Climate breakdown and direct health effects : heat,
and extreme weather events, air pollution,
pandemic risk, vector borne disease
The role of education

7. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown: food insecurity, conflict,
migration

8. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown: food insecurity

9. Impacts of climate change on the
productivity of food crops in 2050
World Bank Publishers
World bank Development report 2010
http://wdronline.worldbank.org/

10. ~1 billion people exposed to extreme heat preventing moderate physical
labour in the hottest month after global temperature >2·5°C above pre-
industrial levels.
(Andrews et al 2018 Lancet Planetary Health )

11. Climate
breakdown
is here now!
marine life
extinction

12. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown: conflict

13. Interconnectedness:
conflict over natural
resources: oil, water

14. Interconnectness: Loss of agricultural land through global
warming, crop failure, food riots, Arab Spring, Syrian war

15. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown: migration

16. Climate breakdown: migration

17. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown and direct health effects : heat,
extreme weather events, air pollution, pandemic
risk, vector borne disease

18. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown and direct health effects : heat,
and extreme weather events

19. The 1995 Chicago
heat wave led to
approximately 700
heat-related deaths in
Chicago over a period
of five days
France, August 2003
~14800 deaths (30,000+ in Europe)
Heatwave
deaths – the
early warnings

20. Climate breakdown and direct health effects : heat

21. More than 35% of the total heat deaths from 1990-2018 attributed to human-induced climate
change using data from 732 sites in 43 countries. No data for much of Africa and Asia
(Vicedo-Cabrera et al Nature Climate Change 2021).

22. Climate breakdown and direct health effects : heat
70% of 405 extreme weather events and trends were found to be made more likely or more severe by human-
caused climate change (Carbon Brief 2021).
-e.g. Siberian heat and fires in 2020- a I in ~ 90,000 year event in a pre-1900 climate, ‘almost impossible’ without
Climate Change (Ciavarella et al Climatic Change 2021)

23. Climate
breakdown
is here
now!- 1 fire

24. Increased wildfire risks to health from climate change.
https://sciencebrief.org/topics/climate-change-science/wildfires
Health effects --Xu et al NEJM 2020, 4 articles Lancet Planetary Health 2021.
marcus-kauffman--iretlQZEU4-unsplash-2
Wildfire particles are smaller than
those in particulate matter from
urban sources (i.e., with a higher
proportion of PM2.5 in PM10) and
may contain more oxidative and
proinflammatory components.
Chen G et al The Lancet Planetary Health 2021 5e579-e587DOI: (10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00200-X)

25. • Climate breakdown is
here now!- 2 floods
Indonesia
floods
Climate
breakdown is here
now!- 2 floods

26. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown and direct health effects : air
pollution

27. Climate breakdown and direct health effects : air pollution

28. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown and direct health effects :risk of
pandemics, and vector borne diseases

29. Climate breakdown and direct health effects :risk of pandemics

30. Climate breakdown and direct health effects :risk of pandemics

31. Melting permafrost – emergent threats to health.
Methuselah microorganisms and viruses have developed many adaptations
to survive in permafrost for millennia.
A representative Arctic permafrost system showing contaminants and
microorganisms corresponding to specific soil horizons (Miner et al Nature
Climate Change 2021)

32. Future risk of mosquito-borne disease in a hotter world
Colón-González et al., The Lancet Planet Health 2021

33. Climate breakdown and health
Climate breakdown and direct health effects :
mental health effects, anxiety, depression, ‘climate
despair’, ‘climate futilitarianism’

34. Mental health effects of climate change (e.g. increases in common mental
disorders after extreme events, solastalgia and climate anxiety) and effective
responses increasingly documented.
RACGP (Image: David Mariuz)
https://www.who.int/health-topics/floods#tab=tab_1
(Photo by Pedro Paulo Xerente for the Fundação Nacional do Índio,
Brazil)

35. https://www.vice.
com/en/article/j5
w374/climate-
despair-is-making-
people-give-up-
on-life

36. Climate breakdown and health: The role of
education
Multidisciplinary
Inter-disciplinary
Life long
Health impact awareness in all policies and
programmes
Health community as global corporate citizens
Alert to the uses and abuses of the Information Age

37. Climate projections after COP 26

38. Integrated climate action for health
image from https://www.calgary.ca/UEP/ESM/Pages/Energy-Savings/Climate-Change.aspx?redirect=/climateprogram

39. What
could
cities do to
adapt to
and
mitigate
climate
Accessible
efficient public
transport and
active travel
Universal
access to clean
low carbon
energy
Safe access to green
spaces and
ecosystem
strategies for
resilience
Housing
Improvements Water
and Sanitation

40. Across the nine countries
studied, by 2040, ambitious
NDCs that put health at the
centre of new climate policies
to meet the ‘well below 2°C’
goals of the Paris Agreement
could reduce annual deaths
due to air pollution by over 1.6
million, annual deaths due to
diet-related risk factors by over
6.4 million, and annual deaths
attributable to physical
inactivity by almost 2.1 million.
The public health benefits of the Paris Agreement
(Hamilton et al Lancet Planetary Health 2021)

41. Reducing the carbon emissions from health care
--NHS England commits to net zero by 2040 for direct emissions and by 2045 for indirect
emissions

44. Climate breakdown and health: The role of education
Health and educational communities as global
corporate citizens

45. Climate breakdown and health: The role of education
Health and educational communities as global corporate citizens

48. Thank you
John Middleton,
President
Association of Schools of Public Health
In the European Region
John.middleton@aspher.org

49. Public health:
‘promoting health, preventing disease, prolonging life through
the organised efforts of society’
Sustainable development:
‘protecting resources from one generation to the next’
Environmental justice:
‘the pursuit of equal justice and equal protection under the law
for all environmental statutes and regulations without
discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and /or socioeconomic
status.’

50. What is ASPHER ?
The Association of Schools of Public Health in the European
Region (ASPHER) is the key independent European
organisation dedicated to strengthening the role of public
health by improving education and training of public health
professionals for both practice and research.
We have 120 member schools of public health in Europe and
associates globally.
We are developing our partnerships with sister public health
organisations in America, Africa, Asia, Australasia and the
Arab world