Climate Change and Health under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway Framework.

Samuel Sellers,Kristie Ebi

doi:10.3390/ijerph15010003

Abstract

A growing body of literature addresses how climate change is likely to have substantial and generally adverse effects on population health and health systems around the world. These effects are likely to vary within and between countries and, importantly, will vary depending on different socioeconomic development patterns. Transitioning to a more resilient and sustainable world to prepare for and manage the effects of climate change is likely to result in better health outcomes. Sustained fossil fuel development will likely result in continued high burdens of preventable conditions, such as undernutrition, malaria, and diarrheal diseases. Using a new set of socioeconomic development trajectories, the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), along with the World Health Organization’s Operational Framework for Building Climate Resilient Health Systems, we extend existing storylines to illustrate how various aspects of health systems are likely to be affected under each SSP. We also discuss the implications of our findings on how the burden of mortality and the achievement of health-related Sustainable Development Goal targets are likely to vary under different SSPs.

Highlights

Climate change is projected to affect health outcomes in a variety of ways, including increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme temperatures and storm events, expansion of the geographic ranges for disease vectors such as mosquitoes, and changes in crop yields that affect nutritional intake [1]
While we anticipate that global mortality will continue to decline, as climate change becomes an even greater threat to global health, we project that an increasing share of variability between countries in mortality outcomes will be explained by health system responses to climate change, which serves as our rationale for expanding the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) narratives to include additional information on health system effects
We outline some of the major ways through which health systems are likely to be affected under different SSPs, illustrating that very different health system responses are possible under each pathway, with substantial implications for population health and the mortality distribution

Summary

Introduction

Climate change is projected to affect health outcomes in a variety of ways, including increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme temperatures and storm events, expansion of the geographic ranges for disease vectors such as mosquitoes, and changes in crop yields that affect nutritional intake [1]. There are a variety of factors that will likely influence outcomes, including a country’s physical location and exposure to climate shocks, current and projected levels of socioeconomic development, as well as healthcare capacity and spending, and changes in the capacity to cope with climate shocks in the future [2]. It is this final factor—changes in the capacity to plan, provide, and finance effective healthcare services in a world impacted by climate change—that we focus on in this paper. We discuss how different development trajectories may affect health systems, as well as briefly highlight the implications of these effects on changes in causes of mortality and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion