Guidance on climate change and health

Climate change impacts health directly due to extreme weather events. Extreme heat, rising sea levels, floods, extreme precipitation, droughts, and storms are increasingly frequent and lead to tens of thousands of deaths every year, mainly in low- and middle-income countries.

Indirect effects of climate change result, for example, from food and water insecurity, increasing transmission of vector- and water-borne diseases, the disruption of the health care system and water and sanitation supplies, increased health inequality, and displacement/migration of communities.

All people are exposed to the hazardous effects of climate change, but some groups are particularly vulnerable such as people living in small island nations and other coastal regions, megacities, and mountainous and polar regions.

Actions in the area of climate change and health entail the following:

• adapt and increase resilience to climate change by increasing the ability to cope with the effects of climate change, and respond in order to maintain essential functions; this is the main focus of this section.
• mitigate climate change, by reducing or preventing emissions of greenhouse gases; many of these actions have co-benefits, for example they also reduce air pollution or save energy. Such co-benefits are already listed in the respective sections of the compendium – Chapter 2 Air pollution and section Housing – the most important ones are listed in this section as well.