Enviro News Asia, London — Experts from the United Kingdom and several countries have discussed the growing links between climate change, population ageing and health, highlighting the need for systems-based approaches to understand increasingly complex climate-related risks.
Georgina Bedenham, Head of Climate and Disaster Risk at the UK Government Actuary’s Department (GAD), outlined how systems thinking can be used to assess the relationship between climate hazards and health outcomes during an International Longevity Centre UK (ILC UK) webinar.
The webinar, titled “Unpicking the Web: Climate Change and Health,” was co-hosted by ILC UK, the ILC Global Alliance Climate Change Committee and GAD. The discussion examined how climate change can affect population health and the systems that support people as they age.
Bedenham presented GAD’s work examining climate change as a compounding risk. She explained that climate-related hazards can affect health both directly and indirectly.
Direct impacts include injuries and mental health effects caused by floods and storms, while extreme heat can increase the risk of heat-related illness and dehydration.
Indirect impacts can occur when climate-related events disrupt healthcare services because of infrastructure pressures or affect healthcare budgets through broader impacts on economic growth.
These risks can also interact and cascade through interconnected health, economic and social systems, making it more difficult to assess their overall effects.
GAD has developed a systems map with input from a diverse group of stakeholders to identify connections between climate-related hazards and mortality in the UK. The webinar provided an opportunity to present emerging findings from the project and discuss its future development.
The discussion also featured Professor Liat Ayalon of the School of Social Work in Israel, who presented a case study from Togo examining how climate change has affected food security, social cohesion and migration among older people.
Professor Torsten Kleinow of the Research Centre for Longevity Risk at the University of Amsterdam examined the relationship between heatwaves and short-term increases in mortality across Europe.
Perspectives from South Africa, Bangladesh and Europe further highlighted the global nature of climate-related health challenges and the differences in impacts across populations and geographical contexts.
GAD said its ongoing work aims to improve understanding of the interactions between climate change and health and support actuarial analysis. The findings are intended to contribute to more informed policy and decision-making as climate-related uncertainty continues to grow.
The webinar forms part of broader international efforts to better understand how climate change may affect health, ageing populations, mortality risks and the systems that support vulnerable communities. (*)
