Climate Change: Preparing for the Health Impacts

Health Canada
2005
ISSN 1496-466 X ISSN 1499-3503 (Online)

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In this Issue

• Climate Change: Preparing for the Health Impacts
• About the Health Policy Research Bulletin
• Major Milestones and Health Initiatives on Climate Change
• Climate Change 101
• Policy Challenges
• Canada's Evidence Base
• Health in a Changing Climate
• Who's Most at Risk?
  Update to "Vulnerability: Who's Most at Risk?"
  article (PDF version)
• Signs of Change, Signs of Trouble
• Health Emergency Management
• Planning Our Future
• Who's Doing What?
• Newspapers: A Novel Data Source
• New and Noteworthy
• Mark Your Calendar

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Climate Change: Preparing for the Health Impacts

With its widespread environmental and human health impacts, climate change has become a global policy issue. Sectors at all levels are being challenged to find collective solutions that safeguard the planet's integrity and the health of its inhabitants, while enhancing the prosperity and quality of life for communities and individuals.

Countries around the world are responding through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol by working to better understand the future climate and to reduce the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Although crucial, mitigation measures cannot halt climate change, only slow it down or reduce its severity. Therefore, Health Canada and its partners are investigating the impacts of climate change on human health and well-being - and how Canadians can prepare for and adapt to them. This issue of the Health Policy Research Bulletin highlights this work and the important results that are beginning to emerge. In particular, the Bulletin:

• examines the relationship between climate and health, and explores the various pathways by which climate change affects human health and well-being
• explores the type of evidence needed to assess the impacts of climate change on health, and presents the findings from some recent Canadian surveillance and research activities
• highlights the scope and magnitude of current and anticipated health impacts of climate change in Canada and around the world, and examines trends in a number of climate-related health risks
• illustrates how individuals and communities can adapt to the health impacts of climate change, and how governments, organizations and individual Canadians are working together to avoid the most severe impacts and cope with the unavoidable consequences

Certainly, questions remain about the vulnerability of Canadians and their communities to the health impacts of climate change. However, a growing body of research and the recent examples of extreme weather events around the world underscore the health and economic costs of inaction, and the importance of establishing adaptation strategies.

Our mission is to help the people of Canada maintain and improve their health.
Health Canada

About the Health Policy Research Bulletin

Health Canada's Health Policy Research Bulletin is published two to three times a year with the purpose of enhancing the evidence base for health policy decision making. A departmental steering committee guides the development of the Bulletin while the Research Management and Dissemination Division (RMDD), within the Applied Research and Analysis Directorate, Health Policy Branch, coordinates the Bulletin's development and production.

RMDD acknowledges the contributions of steering committee members and the staff of the Bulletin Secretariat, Nancy Hamilton, Managing Editor, Jaylyn Wong, Assistant Editor, Tiffany Thornton, Coordinator, and Raymonde Sharpe, Web Posting and Quality Control. RMDD also recognizes the leadership that Tiffany Thornton provided throughout the development of this issue.

Special thanks go to the Guest Editors for this issue, Paul Glover, Director General of the Safe Environments Programme, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch (HECSB) and Jacinthe Séguin, Manager of the Climate Change and Health Office within the Safe Environments Programme, HECSB. In addition, appreciation is extended to Marcia Armstrong and Dieter Riedel for their many contributions throughout the content development and review process.

We welcome your feedback, suggestions and requests to be added to our mailing list. Please forward your comments and any address changes to: <bulletininfo@hc-sc.gc.ca>.

Electronic HTML and PDF versions of the Bulletin are available at: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/sr-sr/pubs/index-eng.php.

Health Policy Research Bulletin

The opinions expressed in these articles, including interpretation of the data, are those of the authors and are not to be taken as official statements of Health Canada.

This publication can be made available in alternative formats upon request.

Permission is granted for non-commercial reproduction provided there is a clear acknowledgment of the source.

Published under the authority of the Minister of Health.

© Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, represented
by the Minister of Public Works and Government Services
Canada, 2005

ISSN 1496-466 X

Editing, design and layout by Allium Consulting Group Inc.

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Return if undeliverable to:
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Some Terms Related to Climate Change and Health

Adaptive capacity: The ability of natural systems, communities, populations or individuals to adapt successfully to climate change so that the negative impacts are lessened or avoided and the potential benefits are maximized.

Climate: The average pattern of weather for a particular region.

Climate change: A sustained departure from the normal weather patterns in a particular region.

Climate change adaptation: Policies, strategies and measures that offset or reduce the effects of climate change and climate variability.

Climate change vulnerability: The degree to which a natural system, region, population, community or individual is unable to cope with the negative impacts of climate change.

Global warming: A worldwide increase in the Earth's average surface temperature.

Greenhouse effect: The warming of the Earth caused by the heat-capturing ability of certain gases in its atmosphere.

Greenhouse gas (GHG): Any of the gases, such as water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane, which absorb the Earth's radiated heat and warm the atmosphere, thereby contributing to the greenhouse effect. GHGs are released from natural sources or from human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels for electricity generation, industrial processes or transportation.

Greenhouse gas mitigation: Actions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

Smog: A mixture of solid and liquid fog and smoke particles formed in air under conditions of high heat and humidity.

Vector: Organisms that carry disease-causing micro-organisms from one host to another.

Weather: The condition of the atmosphere at a particular time and place, as characterized by temperature, precipitation, air pressure, wind, humidity, cloudiness and other meteorological variables.

Zoonosis: A disease of animals, such as rabies, which can be transmitted to human beings.