ABC News
- Catherine Taylor
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Bridget Judd
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Sydney blanketed by smoke on December 2, 2019 due to
bushfires. (ABC News)
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For many Australians who have grown up in our "sunburnt country", last week's
nation-wide heatwave
may have felt like business as usual. It's almost summer, after all.
But if you dig into the statistics, the picture that emerges is deeply
alarming, especially when considered in light of last year's devastating
bushfires: We've just experienced Australia's
warmest November on record.
The hottest year on record was 2019, and 2020 continues to track in the same
direction. Back-to-back days of 40 degrees-plus in Sydney last week occurred
for only the second time in 162 years.
But it's not just the environment that's suffering. Growing numbers of
Australians are experiencing health problems, and even an
increased risk of death, as a result of a rapidly changing climate.
The
Medical Journal of Australia/Lancet Countdown on health and climate
change
this week argued
urgent action is needed to prevent human health being further affected.
The health impact of climate change has already led to a 53.7 per cent global
increase in heat-related mortality between 2010 and 2018, mainly affecting
Japan, China, central Europe and northern India.
In Australia, in the same timeframe we've seen a 22 per cent increase in the
annual average number of days of population exposure to bushfires, which
killed 41 people last summer and exposed "much of Australia's population to
hazardous air quality for a prolonged period of time".
Exposure to mosquito-born diseases including malaria and dengue fever has also
increased along with the threat from zoonotic disease, graphically
demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Food security took a hit, too, implying
associated malnutrition.
So what is being done to improve the health outcomes of Australians in the
face of accelerating climate change? And which foreign nations should
Australia be looking to as leaders?
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Australia has experienced record-breaking hot weather in recent
years. (ABC News: Shelley Lloyd)
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Who is responsible?
Australia's federal system makes healthcare a state responsibility — we have
seen this play out during the coronavirus pandemic.
Because of this state-based approach, not all states and territories are on
the same page when it comes to strategies linking health and climate.
Western Australia is preparing to release the results of its
Climate Health WA Inquiry, which will emphasise connections between climate change and physical and
mental health, vulnerability and resilience.
Victoria
and
Queensland
have similar documents.
But there are growing calls for Australia to develop a national plan of
action that considers the widening impact of global warming on health as a
problem in its own right, not tied to progress on climate change
policy.
"I think a
national approach is absolutely essential, particularly when we get to the emergency management of these things," says
Andrew Gissing, a risk and resilience expert from Risk Frontiers.
Gissing argues the importance of a national approach is obvious in areas like
warning systems for extreme heat, which can't be coordinated effectively with
a state-by-state approach.
Heatwave warning systems
is an area the Bureau of Meteorology is working on.
Richard Yin, a Perth GP and member of
Doctors for the Environment,
has been arguing for a national health and climate change plan for years.
Australia does not have such a strategy, he says, and according to the
MJA/Lancet report, only about 50 of 100 countries in the survey do, with less
than 4 per cent of those that are in place considered effective.
"Australia needs to prepare for climate change impacts on health and that
means actually mapping what's going on and being able to predict what's going
on," Yin says. "There's a complexity to the task and a number of indicators
that we're going to need to try to track."
Yin says that because he's in Perth, his patients seem to be avoiding the
worst health affects of climate change. But he is seeing more patients coming
to him with what he describes as "eco-anxiety".
Yin's colleagues working in regional WA are regularly treating patients for
heat-related health conditions, he adds, and in some cases people have had to
move because of the impact of smoke from bushfires.
"The health impacts from smoke can be can be horrific," Yin says, noting some
people with asthma or lung disease have been in and out of hospital emergency
departments until deciding to leave the place they're living, "because it's
life threatening".
Georgia Behrens, Chair of the Australian Medical Students' Association's
global health committee, agrees COVID-19 has proven how effectively Australia
can manage national health emergencies by using a coordinated approach.
"With a shared set of goals and principles we can work consistently across the
country," she says. "[The pandemic] has given us some early indications of a
way that model could potentially work to tackle this shared health emergency."
Which countries are doing it best?
From
cooling rooms in France
to
England's heatwave plan,
addressing the health impacts of climate change
is a rapidly developing sector.
But Yin struggles to single out one country he feels has achieved the right
approach to this problem. He notes the UK has made progress, but he believes
its strategy "doesn't really capture all of the issues and the planning was
very general".
And even if another country did show leadership, he says, it wouldn't
necessarily act as a blueprint for Australia because climate is so regionally
specific. One area may be prone to extreme heat, but another faces flooding.
Mosquito-borne diseases may be escalating in one place, while bushfire smoke
affects another.
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Sydney was blanketed by bushfire smoke this time last
year. (ABC News)
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Gissing believes
practical solutions can be a good first step
— for instance, by providing localised information about neighbourhood
temperatures and where to find "the coolest places" to spend time.
For Behrens, Germany is showing leadership with its strategy for establishing
a dedicated department within the national health ministry that investigates
health in the age of climate change — particularly in the way it has
coordinated a national and regional plan — which could be relevant to
Australia.
"I think this provides a really useful example of the way we could potentially
proceed," she says, "acknowledging the shared challenge, and taking shared
responsibility."
Changes we can make right now
Although it will take time to change the climate's warming trajectory and
implement environmental policies at government level, there are discreet,
piecemeal changes that can be put in place more quickly, Behrens says.
Urban planning can help cities plan to avoid becoming "heat traps", and
develop spaces aimed at improving physical and mental health.
Gissing recommends increasing green spaces on both a large (parkland) and
small scale (street planting) to offer shade or cooler zones throughout
suburbs.
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Green spaces that create cooler zones within urban landscapes are
important for helping reduce the impact of climate change on human
health. (ABC News: Keane Bourke)
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Even something as simple as retrofitting homes with heat-reflective roofing
and reducing concrete and paving in backyards by increasing grassed areas can
reduce what he calls "heat sinks around the home" and lower air temperatures.
When it comes to fighting fires, Gissing advocates investment in technology
that can lead us to "the next generation of firefighting".
"How are we going to be fighting fires in 2040 or 2050 when the frequency of
blazes is only going to increase because of climate change?" he says, pointing
out that new technology which aims to rapidly detect and suppress fires could
prevent catastrophic fire events in the future.
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Concrete, tile and paving can increase the way heat is absorbed and
raise the temperature of a city.
(Supplied: Linking Melbourne Authority)
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But we also need to improve people's access to zones Gissing calls "cooling
refuges" — public swimming pools, air-conditioned shopping centres or even
building links between neighbours who are able to help each other out.
"We will need community information about heatwaves, volunteers to manage
transport, and shelters," Gissing adds, noting that vulnerable and elderly
people may have trouble reaching these "cooling refuges" even if they exist.
"An integrated approach is the key."
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