This document discusses climate change impacts on health and adaptation strategies. It notes that climate change will have primary, secondary, and tertiary health effects. Rich countries are mostly responsible for climate change but poor countries will be affected first. The best adaptation for poor countries is development through education, equity, and slower population growth. Health advocates must support energy transformation to mitigate climate change impacts on health.

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Environmental health: protecting the ecosystems beyond the
Millennium Development Goals
Prof Colin D Butler ARC Future Fellow
November 24-27, 2013, Ibadan, Nigeria
Climate change health impacts, current adaptation
strategies and the future

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Summary
Climate change science
Climate change and health: primary, secondary and
tertiary effects.
Rich countries mostly to blame; poor countries will
suffer first, but rich countries will be affected
The best adaptation in poor countries is development,
but that needs equity, education and slower population
growth (including in Nigeria)
The health lobby must use its voice to call for energy
transformation. 3

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Most radiation
absorbed by
Earth, warming it
solar strength varies slightly
Aerosols: net cooling
effect
Feedback - additional
GHGs
Climate change:
basic science
some energy radiated
back to space as
infrared waves
Some infrared trapped
by minor atmospheric
gases, warming Earth

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CH4 CO2
Green house gases
N2O
Sulfate particles
Radiative forcing
NO2
CH4
O3
CH4
CO2
Slide adapted from one courtesy Prof
Steffen Loft, University of Copenhagen,
Denmark
wetlands, rice, tundra,
biomass burning,
deforestation
CO2 CH4, black carbon
CO2
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Global mean surface temperature: 1850-2012 Rainfall intensity : 1900-2011
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Sea Level: 1993-2012
Earth system
observations
Greenland ice melt 2013
Held, 2013

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Secondary
Tertiary
Primary
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Heat waves, fewer cold
waves, injuries, floods,
fires, occupational heat
Infectious diseases,
especially vector borne,
allergies, air pollutants
secondary
primary
tertiary
famine, conflict,
population
displacement, refugees
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Mentalhealth

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despair, economic loss,
exposure to asbestos,
mould
40.3o 7.1.13; 40.2o 8.1.13
Bundaberg 25.1.13

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Typhoon Haiyan - 2013

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Old location
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3650m
(13,000 feet)
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Water
scarcity
Regions afflicted by problems
due to environmental stresses:
• population pressure
• water shortage
• climate change affecting crops
• sea level rise
• pre-existing hunger
• armed conflict, current/recent
From UK
Ministry of
Defence
[May RM, 2007 Lowy
Institute Lecture]
Climate Change: Multiplier of
Conflicts and Regional Tensions
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“The dangerous impacts of
climate change can only be
discussed in terms of
nonlinear behavior.’’
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Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
“The difference between 2 and
4 degrees of warming ..
is civilisation’’

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very dangerous
catastrophic
IPCC 2013

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me
my nephew
a baby
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1. cyclone shelter, Bangladesh 2. market, Philippines
3. transport, Thailand 4. border, India - Bangladesh
1-3: the currently acceptable face of adaptation

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Burden of
Disease
(proportion)
Year widely accepted
now 2050?
PRIMARY (eg heat, injury,
productivity)
SECONDARY (e.g.
vector-borne diseases,
air pollution, allergies)
TERTIARY: (a
“systemic multiplier”)
famine, conflict, large-
scale migration,
economic collapse

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2222
“Social vaccine”
“Demand will create a parachute”

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Growth in wind turbine size and capacity (1980—2009)
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source:”Beyond
Zero”

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We need to wake up!
running out of time
.. but we are all at risk; some of us sooner than later
problems far more than climate change but
sustainability solutions will deliver many co-benefits
We need radically new ways of thinking and doing
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