The work has been published in the peer-reviewed journal ‘Annual Review in Public Health’
One of the major concerns currently existing in Spain and in many other parts of the world is how to deal with the increasingly early and intense droughts. Researchers from the CIM-UVigo, the CISC and the University of Bern (Switzerland) address the consequences of drought for public health in the context of climate change in an article published in the American journal Annual Review in Public Health, an international benchmark in its field. As a result of their analysis, their conclusions underline that “climate change has profound implications for public health, and drought is an extreme event with significant health impacts”.
The article, entitled Public health implications of drought in a climate change context: a critical review, by the EPhysLab group (Environmental Physics Laboratory) of the CIM-UVigo, includes the participation of researcher Coral Salvador and the professors and physicists Raquel Nieto and Luis Gimeno. The panel of authors is completed by Sergio Vicente (Pyrenean Institute of Ecology of the CSIC), Ricardo García (Complutense University of Madrid and Institute of Geosciences of the CSIC) and Ana M. Vicedo (Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine of the University of Bern, Switzerland).
The Annual Review of Public Health, “an absolute reference for public health worldwide”, the EPhysLab members explain, covers significant advances in the field of public health. The publication, they explain, “only accepts articles by invitation, which are decided by an editorial committee at the proposal of the members of an internal committee of public health experts, and these articles must reflect hot topics with current repercussions and which they consider will have a major impact in the future”. In this case, the journal invited Coral Salvador to carry out the study now published, highlighting from EPhysLab the fact that this researcher from the CIM-UVigo “is the first European woman to publish as first author an article in this journal and that until today there has never been an article published in this journal completely composed of Spaniards”.
Climate trends and impacts
The published paper analyses “observed and projected trends in the occurrence of droughts, assesses the main health impacts of drought, and provides an overview of prevention and adaptation policies, providing recommendations for addressing future climate change threats and enhancing resilience”. It concludes that “climate studies predict that extreme weather events are expected to increase due to climate change, which could lead to an additional burden of disease and mortality for humans”. Previous studies, it says, show that the severity of drought has increased in recent decades, which is mainly associated with changes in atmospheric evaporative demand. The main increase, it says, was observed in subtropical and semi-arid regions of the world, and environmental and agricultural impact data support this observation, with the increase expected to continue in the coming decades. “Climate change projections show a pervasive increase in the frequency and severity of droughts over large regions of the world. This increase will be associated with increased variability of precipitation globally, a decrease in precipitation in some regions, and an overall increase in temperature and atmospheric demand,” the text states. Even in areas where precipitation is expected to increase, periods of precipitation deficits are expected. “Therefore, impact models project that droughts will result in increased socio-economic and environmental impacts in future climate scenarios,” the research team says.
Exposure to drought, the paper concludes, “has far-reaching health impacts that affect millions of people worldwide, regardless of a country’s level of socioeconomic development, and includes several associated causes and consequences”. The negative health impacts of drought, the research team says, could be related to an increased risk of water-, food- and disease-borne diseases and an increased risk of malnutrition. In addition, dry spells, they note, can often be linked to heat waves and increased air pollution. All of the above lead to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and, ultimately, possible mortality, the study says, adding that drought is also associated with mental health disorders associated with economic loss, migration and social uprooting. “The impacts of drought are experienced unequally across communities and population groups: those with potentially greater vulnerability, such as children, older people, women and people with low socio-economic status, and those who suffer a greater vulnerability, such as children, older people, women and people with low socio-economic status, and those who suffer greater exposure to hazards, are often more affected. These impacts will be exacerbated by climate change,” the paper says.
Strategies and challenges
Regarding strategies to reduce drought-related health impacts, the article notes that “they are well defined and involve moving from crisis management to risk management”. However, the text notes, “integrative action plans must be implemented to protect human health more effectively. The transfer of resources especially to developing or underdeveloped countries is crucial to reduce risk and vulnerability and, ultimately, to improve the resilience of populations as the climate changes”. The published paper, say the authors, “highlights and aims to inform research in as many regions of the world as possible” and addresses the multiple diversity of studies that need to be conducted as variation in impacts between countries and communities is due to multiple factors, such as ageing, socio-economic status, access to health care and gender, that affect population resilience. “The need to publish this article is not only to highlight the impact of droughts on human health through different mechanisms, but also to highlight the absolute need to create proactive and inclusive action plans focused on risk management, and that resources must be transferred to developing countries and the most disadvantaged to reduce their vulnerability and risks to the effects of droughts,” says the research team.
The article was chosen by the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education of Columbia University, in the United States, in the framework of its Climate Clinics: Be the Expert, in which they compile a compilation of training episodes in which they weekly highlight the most outstanding lines in climate and health for the training of professionals, researchers and social and political actors with decision-making powers.
The research activity of the CIM is supported by the Xunta de Galicia and the European Union, through its co-financing under the Galicia ERDF Operational Programme 2014-2020.
Source: DUVI