Public Health and Climate Change - Combining Climate Change and Chronic Disease Prevention

Exhaust fumes, insulin syringes and a meat processing plant

The World Health Organisation estimates that 60%, or 35 million, of the world's annual deaths are attributable to four non-communicable diseases (NCDs) - cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes and cancers. Meanwhile, obesity continues to escalate as a major health and economic concern globally.

Emerging evidence links the causes of climate change and NCDs (eg car dependency; poor urban design; mass food production). It has been argued that the "two great and urgent contemporary human challenges' - to improve global health (especially NCDs) and reduce the health impacts of climate change - would benefit from aligning their policy agendas to simultaneously improve population and planetary health. According to Friel et al (2011) 'well designed climate change policy can reduce the incidence of major NCDs in local poulations.' Despite this clear link, the confluence remains underexamined in both global health and climate change research.

This collaboration, part of the WUN Global Health Justice Network, brings together scholars in public health, law, political science, development studies, sociology and philosophy to examine potential areas for combining and applying the knowledge base and tools of global justice and global health to understand and intervene to mitigate the shared causes of climate change and NCDs at their interface. This is of vital importance to human development given that both the impact of climate change and the death and disability from NCDs are greatest in those countries which bear the least responsibility for creation of the conditions which gave rise to these interrelated challenges, and which have the fewest resources to combat them.

The group came together at an international workshop (see program) hosted by the University of Sydney in May 2011 which resulted in a communique to be presented to the United Nations High Level Meeting on Non-communicable Diseases in New York City in September 2011.