| 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.
|
|
