World Environmental Health Day 2024 focuses on "Environmental Health: Creating Resilient Communities through Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation." This theme highlights the urgent need for communities to bolster their resilience against environmental hazards and the impacts of climate change. With increasing climate events and natural disasters, building resilience has never been more critical. Solutions can consider both temporal and spatial scales as effects are both short and long term. Solutions should incorporate and consider resource constraints compete with ethical motives.
Why It Matters
Environmental health encompasses the relationship between people and their environment, including how environmental factors impact our well-being. As climate change accelerates, extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods, and wildfires become more frequent and severe. These events not only threaten lives but also strain infrastructure and disrupt communities. By addressing disaster risks and adapting to climate changes, we can protect our health and ensure a safer, more sustainable future.
But it is not just about temperature. Climate change is bringing multiple different changes in different regions – which will all increase with further warming. These include changes to wetness and dryness, to winds, snow and ice, coastal areas and oceans. For example:
- Climate change is intensifying the water cycle. This brings more intense rainfall and associated flooding, as well as more intense drought in many regions.
- Climate change is affecting rainfall patterns. In high latitudes, precipitation is likely to increase, while it is projected to decrease over large parts of the subtropics. Changes to monsoon precipitation are expected, which will vary by region.
- Coastal areas will see continued sea level rise throughout the 21st century, contributing to more frequent and severe coastal flooding in low-lying areas and coastal erosion. Extreme sea level events that previously occurred once in 100 years could happen every year by the end of this century.
- Further warming will amplify permafrost thawing, and the loss of seasonal snow cover, melting of glaciers and ice sheets, and loss of summer Arctic sea ice.
- Changes to the ocean, including warming, more frequent marine heatwaves, ocean acidification, and reduced oxygen levels have been clearly linked to human influence. These changes affect both ocean ecosystems and the people that rely on them, and they will continue throughout at least the rest of this century.
- For cities, some aspects of climate change may be amplified, including heat (since urban areas are usually warmer than their surroundings), flooding from heavy precipitation events and sea level rise in coastal cities.
What You Can Do
- Learn and Share Knowledge: Learn about local climate risks and disaster preparedness. Share this knowledge within your community to increase collective awareness. Join regional and global platforms such as Citizen Science.
- Reduce Your Carbon Footprint: Make eco-friendly choices like reducing energy use, minimising waste, and opting for sustainable products. Small changes in daily life can collectively make a big difference. Tools to calculate personal footprints are available online.
- Get Involved Locally: Join local environmental or disaster response organisations. Volunteering for clean-up efforts or participating in community planning can enhance local resilience.
- Support Climate Policies: Advocate for and support policies that aim to mitigate climate change and improve disaster preparedness. Engage with local government and organisations to push for action.
By taking these steps, you contribute to building stronger, more resilient communities capable of facing environmental challenges head-on.