Evolution of Health Care Series – Facing the health consequences of climate change: what path for Europe?
With POLITICO’s reporters Louise Guillot and Zia Weise and Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, director of the Jacques Delors Energy Centre, senior research fellow, European Energy Policy
The impact of the environment — and its degradation — on human health is clear: one in every eight deaths in the EU — some 630,000 deaths per year — can be attributed to stressors such as air and noise pollution, due to the link with non-communicable diseases such as cancer or cardiovascular disease, as well as contributing to mental ill-health.
More than ever, it’s now touching the lives of people in temperate regions of the globe. On top of a pandemic, Europe also went through a record-breaking summer with heatwaves and fires raging in some parts of the continent, and disaster floods impacting others in unprecedented ways.
How are these consequences of climate change impacting the health of people in Europe and – as we come out of the pandemic – what can be done to face them better? This question, as global leaders are gathering at COP26, is top of mind for health care policy makers and providers and could tie in well with the upcoming French Presidency’s objectives of going beyond health security in the first half of 2022.
Question to be addressed include:
- What are the worst-case health outcomes of failing to tackle rising environmental threats to health? Is Europe facing a future with more pandemics?
- How can Europe best deal with the direct health impact of climate change and environmental degradation, such deaths related to heat or air pollution, and with second-order impacts such as the spread of diseases prevalent in the tropics such as malaria or dengue?
- Policy fragmentation, lack of financing, siloes…. what stands in the way of an impactful and coordinated European health policy response to these environmental threats?
- Who needs to invest and what are the priorities to get the best value out of those investments?
- Are vulnerable groups more impacted by environmental health threats? What can be done to ensure more equity in health and well-being?
- The first response to the pandemic has been to work on health security, has the time come to go beyond crisis preparedness and into responding to such future global threats?
As the WHO just published its report on climate change and health providing recommendations for governments to maximize the health benefits of tackling climate change, this POLITICO Live virtual panel discussion will be key to debate these questions and much more.