Climate change and adaptation strategies for human health (cCASHh)

Description:

The health of populations in Europe will be affected in the coming decades by global climate changes. Adaptation is a key response strategy to minimise potential impacts of climate change, and to reduce, with the least cost, the adverse effects on health. cCASHh investigated some of the many ways in which climate change affects health and how the environment and health sector can adapt. The project has several goals related to the identification of the vulnerability to adverse impacts of climate change on human health;

• Review of current measures and technologies, policies and barriers to improve the adaptive capacity of the human populations to climate change;
• Identification of the most appropriate measures, technologies, policies and the most effective approaches to implementation, for European populations to successfully adapt to climate change;
• Estimate the health benefits of specific strategies or combinations of strategies for adaptation for vulnerable populations under different climate change scenarios;
• Estimate costs due to climate-related damage and the implementation of adaptive measures and benefits (both of climate change and of adaptation strategies) including co-benefits independent of climate change. Climate change and adaptation strategies for human health

Important findings of the project so far:

• Europe is not well prepared to cope with “unexpected” extreme thermal stress events.
• A contingent valuation survey was carried out to estimate the benefits of reducing the risk of dying during heat-waves. It was estimated for the city of Rome, that the monetised mortality damages of the heat-waves in the absence of planned adaptation programmes would be €281 million for the year 2020 (in 2004 Euros);
• There is incomplete information collection on short and long-lasting health effects of floods;
• Tick-transmitting Lyme borreliosis and tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) (Ixodes ricinus) has spread into higher latitudes (in Sweden) and altitudes (in the Czech Republic) in recent decades and has become more abundant in many places;
• Although several models predicted a potential increase of malaria in Europe, there is agreement that the risk is very low under current socioeconomic conditions;
• There are some hypotheses that point to a considerable potential for climate-driven changes in Leishmaniasis distribution in the future;
• Cases of salmonellosis increase by 5% to 10% for each one-degree increase in weekly temperature, for ambient temperatures above about 5º C;
• Outbreaks of cryptosporidioses have occurred as a result of intense precipitation

Project information

Lead

WHO Regional Office for Europe (IT) Dr Bettina Menne

Partners

* Deutscher Wetterdienst (DE), Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung

Source of funding

FP 5