Dec 10, 2024
Climate change is affecting human health in many different ways, including the emergence and spread of infectious diseases, increased risk of heat-related illnesses and mental health issues and challenges to food systems and nutrition. The impacts of climate change on health—already profound—are only likely to get worse over time.
A new study examines how climate change could increase cases of diseases and deaths in 69 low- and middle-income countries and presents the corresponding economic cost aims to help fill that gap. The report called “The Cost of Inaction: Quantifying the Impact of Climate Change on Health in Low- and Middle-Income Countries” was funded by the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) and produced by the Climate and Health Program in the World Bank’s Health, Nutrition, and Population Global Practice (HNP GP).
“The work of building resilience to climate change is literally about saving lives,” said Lorie Rufo, who leads CIF’s Resilience portfolio. “We need to grasp the severity of the threats to human health and mobilize quickly and decisively to address them.”
Governments need to know the likely health outcomes due to climate change and their economic impacts so they can implement appropriate climate adaptation and mitigation measures. However, few studies have aimed to assess the economic cost associated with the health impacts of projected climate change.
Building on earlier work by the World Health Organization (WHO), the researchers modeled the impacts of climate change on illness and mortality from selected vector- and water-borne diseases, child stunting, and extreme heat, as well as associated economic costs. The key findings are:
- The impacts of climate change on health are “devastating” and call for “immediate, decisive action” at the global and country levels. Between 2026 and 2050, climate change is projec¬ted to cause 4.1 to 5.2 billion cases (depending on the climate scenario) of climate-sensitive diseases in the 69 LMICs. The cumulative number of deaths linked to the health impacts of climate change is projected at 14.5 to 15.6 million.
- Scaling climate-health action is needed to avert trillions of dollars in economic costs by 2050. The economic cost of these additional cases of morbidity and mortality is estimated to reach between US$8.6 and 20.8 trillion, or between 0.7 and 1.3 percent of the projected GDPs of the 69 LMICs.
- Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia will bear the largest share of health impacts due to climate change. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 71 percent of cases and nearly half of all projected deaths, with economic costs of 2.6 to 3.7 percent of GDP. South Asia accounts for about 18 percent of cases and a quarter of deaths, with economic costs of 1.2 to 2.8 percent of GDP.
- Actual impacts on health – and associated costs – are likely to be much higher. The authors stressed that they had only considered a limited number of health risks, and they had not examined additional factors, such as migration, water stress, air pollution and impacts on mental health. “The results presented here should be understood as just the tip of the iceberg of the scale in terms of the real impacts of climate change on health in LMICs. It is an urgent call for action to build strong and resilient health systems. This is why, at the World Bank, we have steeply scaled up our investments for climate. In fact, in the last year alone we committed US$ 2.3 billion for climate-health action in our projects across the globe.”, said Tamer Samah Rabie, Global Program Lead, Climate and Health, at the World Bank HNP GP.
The new projections of 800 000 deaths per year are far higher than those made by the WHO a decade ago of around 250 000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050. In the report’s foreword, Juan Pablo Uribe, Global Director for Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank, said the “projections should galvanize decision-makers and spur urgent, transformative action. Countries must adopt bold measures to limit the impacts of climate change and significantly boost the resilience of their health care sys¬tems,” he said.
“This cannot be about addressing the impact on specific diseases alone. Instead, we must focus on strengthe¬ning health systems so they can adapt and mitigate the broader impacts of climate change on health conditions.”
