Your Health and a Changing Climate: Newsletter - Volume 3

Outreach Activities

Understanding the Nexus

Health Canada, the University of Toronto, and C-CIARN Health, with financial assistance from SSHRC, held a workshop in Ottawa in late fall 2004 entitled "Understanding the Nexus of Health, Social and Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Canadians". University and government researchers, stakeholder groups, and government policy makers were in attendance. Discussion following the presentation of 16 research papers concluded that Nexus research should have the following characteristics:

1. It must be trans-disciplinary. It must lead to the asking of new research questions which any given discipline, by itself, could not ask and answer.
2. The agenda needs a broad epistemology, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, stories and numbers, lay and expert knowledge.
3. It must help build research capacity, training the next generation of researchers.
4. It must develop new research tools and models.
5. The agenda must be a multi-stakeholder enterprise.
6. It must be national in scope, and also include Canada's international role.
7. The agenda must be based on a broad definition of health.
8. The agenda must recognize 3 types of vulnerability that flow from group composition (eg. age, economic status), from spatial context (e.g. rural v. urban) and from the national collective as well as internal regions and groupings (eg. The North)
9. It must include the study of mobilization and how knowledge leads to action?
10. It must be based in ethical regard for the research subjects.

Research gaps identified included:

• how do we do effective messaging of climate change to different segments of society?
  
• what are the civil society mechanisms that exist to deal with impacts of climate change and bolster adaptive capacity?
  
• what is the relationship between climate change messaging and behaviour change?
  
• what are the psycho-social impacts of extreme weather events?
  
• understanding institutional trust and acceptance of information by the public
  
• what are the mechanisms to change values?
  
• infrastructure for emergency preparedness
  
• social and economic indicators related to health impacts of climate change
  
• role of culture in adapting to climate change
  
• develop scenario-independent adaptation models focussed on community resiliency
  
• need specific baseline data to compare and assess impacts of climate change
  
• health impacts of specific adaptation behaviours
  
• where is Canada in the international context?
  

For more information, contact Marcia Armstrong at
marcia_armstrong@hc-sc.gc.ca

Climate Change in Canadian Society: Social Science Research Issues and Opportunities

On June 2, 2005, a day long symposium at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, organized by C-CIARN Health, C-CIARN Agriculture, and C-CIARN BC, highlighted some of the social science research currently being undertaken on climate change issues and, through discussion and keynote speakers, encouraged involvement by new social scientists in climate change work. Key note speakers, Thomas Homer-Dixon of University of Toronto, applied his work on the ingenuity gap to climate change adaptation and Barry Smit of the University of Guelph, encouraged adaptation research that had practical application to real life situations.

For more information and a copy of the symposium report, contact
ewall@uoguelph.ca

Lecture Series

Jose Kusugak, President of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and Dr. Christopher Furgal of Laval University made a presentation at Health Canada on the health impacts of a changing climate on people and communities in the Arctic on June 6, 2005. Mr. Kusugak highlighted, from his own personal experiences, how the climate has been changing since his youth and the impacts this is having on the lives of northern residents. Dr. Furgal, coauthor of the Health Chapter of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (see Publications section), described the research he has been conducting in the North on the health impacts of a changing climate and identified the data, additional research, and methods required to further this work and better understand the impacts and vulnerabilities to climate change of health in northern communities. The experiences presented argue for a multi-stakeholder, participatory framework for assessment of the impacts that supports the necessary analysis, understanding and enhancement of local capacities to respond and adapt to the health impacts of climate change at the local scale.

For more information on this research, contact Chris Furgal at
christopher.furgal@crchul.ulaval.ca

Adapting to Climate Change: Reducing Health Risks from Woodsmoke

A cross-cutting policy / research forum on Woodsmoke and Health wascoordinated by the New Brunswick Lung Association, bringing together researchers and policy makers from across Canada and parts of the USA. The twenty-five participants represented many sectors: academia, government, interest groups and research networks. All shared an interest in exploring the effects of smoke on human health, whether the smoke originated from forest fires or woodstoves; and further, exploring options for reducing the health effects of smoke from these sources.

For further information, contact Barbara MacKinnon at
barb.mackinnon@nb.lung.ca

Adapting to Climate Change in Canada 2005: Understanding Risks and Building Capacity

The first national conference on climate change impacts and adaptations was held in Montreal from May 4-7, 2005. Approximately 120 research papers were presented as well as 37 posters. Two sessions on health and climate change related issues were part of this conference. In addition, health related papers were presented in several other sessions.

For copies of the presentations and for more information, visit the conference website at  www.adaptation2005.ca