Two sides to climate change

Climate change has assumed unprecedented importance over these last few years. In the light that we, human beings, have been having an exponentially increasing negative effect on the climate for these last 250 years, one asks: Why is it that climate change is now on everyone's lips whereas a decade ago it was almost unheard of? Why are politicians and decision-makers only now giving it its due importance? Why should we even consider looking into such a subject, which, after all, has been neglected for years?

Summer of 2003 saw an unexpectedly intense heat wave, which swept over Europe, affecting the health of the most vulnerable and claiming 40,000 lives in the WHO (World Health Organisation) European region alone. Vector-borne diseases - diseases spread by mosquitoes, ticks and other insects - are changing their geographical distribution, infecting previously unexposed populations. Rising atmospheric temperatures and a decrease in rainfall over the Mediterranean region and other areas are expected to further worsen water shortages and decrease food productivity.

After decades of unsustainable use of fossil fuels, deforestation and wasting, the centrality of human health in the climate change issue is finally rising to the surface. What we need to realise is that, no matter how well we manage to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the climate will keep on changing in the coming years. This means that extreme weather events like heat waves will become more intense and more frequent. Temperatures will also continue rising. Above-normal ultraviolet radiation (UV index) will be prolonged for a longer time period because of climate change, leading to an increase in incidence of sun strokes, sun burn and skin cancer. Rainfall will become more scarce, affecting our water resources and the way we manage them.

Do we need more evidence to say that climate change is affecting health and that we need to prepare for further climatic changes?

This was discussed in a workshop on Climate Change Health Impacts And Adaptation In The Mediterranean, organised by the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health in Athens last month, a workshop which I attended as a Maltese representative thanks to the Environmental Health Department and the Department of Health Information and Research.

The workshop was part of a larger project on climate change and impact research in the Mediterranean (CIRCE), which aims at predicting and quantifying physical impacts of climate change in the Mediterranean area, evaluating the consequences of climate change for the society and the economy of the populations located in the Mediterranean area, developing an integrated approach to understand combined effects of climate change and identifying adaptation and mitigation strategies in collaboration with regional stakeholders.

Health is central in the climate change issue and it is being affected adversely by climate change. In 1957, Roger Revelle and Hans Suess of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography argued that "human beings are carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor reproduced in the future". What we forgot along the way was that we, human beings and conductors of this experiment, were also going to be the subjects of this massive experiment.

So far, at a political level, the focus has been on mitigation - how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, how to slow down our impact on the climate. What is being forgotten or subconsciously avoided is the fact that, no matter how well we manage to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the climate is going to have its toll on us in the years to come. It is time now to start focusing on the impact of climate change on health and, most importantly, together with mitigation we have to start speaking about adaptation.

The author is a medical doctor.