Children
are already bearing the brunt of the health impacts of global climate
change . the planet Health Organization estimates that over 80%
of the illnesses, injuries, and deaths occurring thanks to global
climate change are in children, particularly those living in poor and
under-served areas. Global climate change is altering weather patterns
in ways in which can affect the geographic range and incidence of
health outcomes that are among the main killers of children:
malnutrition, diarrheal diseases, and vector-borne
diseases like malaria. By the year 2000, global climate
change may have increased the numbers of cases of those diseases
by roughly3to10%.
These
percentages translate into large numbers of children: diarrheal diseases claim
the lives of nearly 2.5 million children annually, malaria causes an estimated
655,000 deaths, and malnutrition is an underlying explanation
for death of half the slightly below 7 million deaths
globally in children under age five. Based only on the climate influence on
health risks, future impacts on children are projected to extend, assuming
no additional interventions to avoid, steel oneself against, answer,
or get over the impacts of climate variability and alter.
Many other risks for children's health and well-being are expected or likely to
occur with ongoing and future global climate change, with additional data
and understanding needed to quantify current and possible future adverse
consequences. a couple of examples include:
- Contaminated water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene are the leading
reasons for the high rates of diarrheal diseases. Rising temperatures that
facilitate the replication of some pathogens, and more flooding events that
damage water treatment and/or spread pathogens could increase significantly the
burden of disease, counting on the effectiveness of control programs.
- global climate change is contributing to increases in pollen
in some regions which will be exacerbating allergies and asthma.
However, there's an incomplete understanding of the degree to which
aeroallergens are contributing to the worldwide increase in pediatric
allergic disease, among other issues, to estimate the contribution
of global climate change.
- Increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are acidifying the ocean,
with possible consequences for food security in some regions.
Providing more comprehensive estimates of current and projected impacts is
complex due to the character of global climate
change itself and since of the
various factors which will increase or decrease the rates of
climate-sensitive health outcomes. The science is obvious on many
aspects of global climate change and its associated risks.
Climate change is caused by natural and man-made activities, particularly the
burning of fossil fuels and deforestation that are adding significant
quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In 2007, the
Intergovernmental Panel on global climate change concluded the
evidence is unequivocal that humans are changing the
climate, supported observed increases in average air temperatures and
other geophysical factors. Further, emitted greenhouse gases take decades to
centuries to be absorbed within the soil and sequestered within
the ocean, leading to a "climate change commitment".
Essentially, the greenhouse gases currently within the atmosphere
will still drive global climate change for a minimum
of 30-40 years. About the maximum amount global climate
change |temperature change"> global climate change will
occur over that point period as has already occurred since the
economic Revolution; the speed of climate change is bigger than it's been
in a minimum of 10,000 years.
We also know that shifts within the mean values of weather
variables also are resulting in very large observed percentage
changes within the occurrence of utmost weather and climate
events. The frequency and intensity of daily temperature extremes and heavy
precipitation events in some regions are now different than they were before
1950, partially thanks to global climate change .
Estimating the extent to which these and other changes are often attributed
to global climate change is complex due to the
problem in determining whether one event would have occurred
naturally. an easy analogy is athletic performance under the
influence of performance enhancing drugs. An athlete may need achieved a
specific outcome supported aptitude , but the
utilization of medicine made it more likely.
Further, it's easier to work out statistically by analyzing
a series of past events to understand if drugs influenced a series of
outstanding performances than by watching one particular achievement.
Similarly, the energy that greenhouse gases are adding to the atmosphere is
being expressed through more and more severe extreme events,
although it's impossible to attribute anybody event
to global climate change alone.
Thus projections of future global climate change and its impacts are,
of course, inherently uncertain because it's impossible to
completely predict how the climate system
will answer additional greenhouse emission emissions; what
climate policies are going to be implemented (and how rapidly); how
societies will develop in terms of demographics, economics, technology,
etc.; and therefore the effectiveness and timeliness of public health
actions to deal with the health risks of global climate
change . However, we all know that children are being suffering
from climate today, and these same risks are very likely to
extend .
Children are being suffering from recent increases within
the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, and duration of
utmost weather events. for instance , within the Horn
of Africa failed rains within the boreal winter of 2010/2011 and
therefore the boreal spring of 2011 played a critical role within
the 2011 food crisis that cause famine in parts of Ethiopia and
Somalia; other important factors that were exacerbated by the shortage of
rainfall included high global food prices, political instability, and chronic
poverty. This followed poor rainfall in 2008 and 2009. Additionally, to
the immediate impacts of acute food shortage, chronic malnutrition affects a
child's life course. Concern about achieving the MDG targets increases when
combining the limited progress in reducing chronic childhood malnutrition in
Africa with projections that global climate change will increase the
challenges to food security through changing crop yields under new temperature
and precipitation patterns.
Climate change, then, can exacerbate current challenges for improving
children's health and well-being and may create new risks. So how
can we all know by what proportion will risks to children
increase? Although quantifying the danger to understand exactly
when, where, and by what proportion the danger will
increase might not always be possible, other approaches to
understanding how climate and other factors could interact to affect children's
health during a particular region are available. When sufficient
local data are lacking (which is common within the most vulnerable
places), narrative scenarios supported expert judgment and
native expertise are often helpful. Narratives of possible
futures are often constructed to raised understand how
various risk factors can interact, including whether tipping points might
be reached, to tell development of strong local
policies and measures to avoid, steel oneself against ,
and answer changing health burdens under a variety of
climate and socio-economic changes. Limited data and projections of the health
impacts of global climate change shouldn't be a barrier to
action, but a call to more research and to flexible and iterative approaches to
decision-making, just like the use of scenarios and adaptive
management.
What are often done?
Current policies and measures to stop climate-sensitive health
outcomes can and will be modified to deal with not only
current impacts, but also consider the risks of future global climate
change , to make sure they're robust to warmer temperatures
and changing precipitation patterns. the planning , implementation,
monitoring, and evaluation of latest policies and measures should
also explicitly incorporate consideration of the risks of global climate
change . Adaptive management approaches are often wont
to manage uncertainties about the magnitude and extent of global
climate change and its possible consequences, and about future development
pathways. The absence of effective and timely actions to deal
with global climate change is predicted to steer to
preventable consequences for child growth and development, needlessly affecting
current and future generations.
About
the Authors: Mubeena Iram, Mehak Shenaz and Komel Jehangir are focused on climate
change science, integrated assessment of ecological and economic impacts of
human-induced climate change and identifying viable climate policies and
technological solutions.
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