CLIMATE CHANGE INDUCED CHALLENGES TO THE RIGHT TO HEALTH: AN EMERGING THREAT THAT REQUIRES IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION

ABSTRACT

Climate change is possibly the most serious worldwide environmental issue. Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of natural disasters causing the vulnerability of impoverished communities in developing nations, notably in LDCs, small island developing countries, and African countries. Large-scale anthropogenic changes caused by climate change are interacting to create important emergent public health hazards that jeopardize people's health and well-being. These concerns include not just increased infectious disease exposure, but also water scarcity, food scarcity, natural disasters, and population displacement, which may be the largest public health problem humanity has faced. There is a pressing need to increase our understanding of the dynamics of these risks creating the complex interplay of factors that generate them, the characteristics of populations that make them particularly vulnerable, and the identification of which populations are at greatest risk from each of these threats. Accelerating changes to Earth’s climate, its terrestrial surface, and the functioning of its ecosystems are endangering our future access to some of the most important and basic components of population health: adequate nutrition, safe water, clean air. Our growing awareness for these emerging public health hazards needs the development of a new discipline of study within environmental health. In contrast to the traditional environmental health focus on exposure to toxins, we need to consider the broader implications of the human transformation of the natural world. This paper will examine how changes in land use, climate, and the function of ecosystems may act synergistically to alter exposure to infectious disease and natural disasters, while curtailing access to food, clean air, and clean water and increasing the likelihood of population displacement and civil strife. This paper will propose a legal framework for conceptualizing the connections between global environmental change and human health. It will concentrate on discussing why it has been difficult to demonstrate direct links between deteriorating environmental conditions and unfavourable health outcomes.