| Concerns about
climate change are often placed into the distant future. But
the health and financial impacts of climate instability are
already affecting many nations and economies. Climate change
affects human health and economics via many pathways, including:
- The productivity of natural and managed biological
resources and ecosystems – forest, agricultural
and marine,
- The emergence and distribution of infectious diseases
in plants, animals, and humans,
- The costs of extreme weather for travel, trade, tourism,
and infrastructure – especially in developing nations,
and
- The character and intensity of ambient air pollution
and synergies with climate change (e.g., increased heatwaves).
Until recently, little had been done to integrate
our current understanding of climate change and ecosystem
degradation with projections for public health, the value
of biological resources, and the long-term security of investments.
In 2003, Swiss Re, the United Nations Development
Programme, and The Center for Health and the Global Environment
at Harvard Medical School, have joined forces to engage in
a multi-stakeholder scenario building exercise: Climate Change
Futures: Health, Ecological and Economic Dimensions. This
international, multidisciplinary project is designed to formulate
future scenarios and their consequences based on a set of
climate projections and development trajectories.
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