Reducing risks to urban health and building climate resilience, by David Dodman. Complete article/Source: IIED Blog, March 17, 2014.
Excerpts: Why are the health prospects for residents in informal urban settlements so poor, and what future issues will contribute to making these better or worse? These were among the questions discussed at the 11th International Conference on Urban Health held recently in Manchester.
As part of this event, a group of participants grappled with the ways in which climate change will affect urban health, based on experiences of both the threats and opportunities of managing health risks in countries including India, Tanzania and Vietnam.
Look at all the factors
Efforts to identify the health consequences of climate change have often adopted an ‘impacts-first’ perspective, identifying pathways through which particular changes in (for instance) temperature or rainfall patterns will affect individuals.
But this does not tell the full story. People exposed to high temperatures or disease pathogens will be affected in different ways, depending on their age, their pre-existing health, their work, the quality of their housing and many other factors.
Public health experts rightly identify both social and ecological factors as being important determinants of health. This awareness is central to understanding people’s vulnerability to climate change — which is shaped by exposure to particular shocks and stresses, their likelihood to be harmed as a result of these, and the extent of their capacity to adapt to reduce the harm they experience in future.
In this sense, approaches to improving urban health and to reducing harm from climate change in urban areas can be aligned effectively — through strengthening the underlying resilience of individuals and communities to health risks and other threats, and through addressing many of the underlying environmental health threats associated with poor sanitation and inadequate basic services.
