Planetary crisis heightens global inequality of health opportunities

The worldwide inequality of health opportunities is being further heightened by the triple planetary crisis – climate change, loss of biodiversity and environmental pollution. Hence preventing it is more than a question for health systems; as a central concern it must be embedded in climate and environmental policy. This is being urged by scientists from Heidelberg University whose research focuses, inter alia, on global health, environment-related diseases and climate action. They advocate not only for countering this inequality at the individual level but also for removing structural causes. In a paper that has appeared in the journal “Nature Human Behaviour” they explain the approaches required in research and policy-making.

The authors of this publication underline that seven of the eight “safe and just Earth system boundaries” have already been transgressed – the boundaries that stand for the stability and resilience of the whole planet and also take account of equity for all people. Accordingly, a large part of the global population is affected by these boundary transgressions with the impacts being unequally distributed worldwide. The Heidelberg researchers, state that low or medium-income countries are being disproportionately impacted, as are poorer and older population groups within high-income regions.

“Prosperity and greater financial latitude enable people to protect themselves better from climate and environmental crises without having to change their consumer habits – habits that contribute to the planetary crisis. This inequality is a key obstacle to health equity, which should offer the greatest possible potential for a healthy life to all individuals, regardless of their social, economic or geographical situation. Combating it is linked to the question of what contribution climate policy and climate action can make,” underlines political scientist Dr. Nihan Toprakkiran. She is the Scientific Coordinator of Heidelberg University’s Climate-Life-Nexus Flagship Initiative, which is set to begin its work soon, focusing on interdisciplinary research on climate-health interlinkages.

According to Prof. Dr. Joacim Rocklöv, scientist at the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health and the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing, health risks entailed by the triple planetary crisis are rarely due to a single threat. “Heat, environmental pollution, climate-related infectious diseases and limited resources can occur at the same time, and these risks don’t just add up – they strengthen one another,” says the epidemiologist, mathematician and statistician. He is the director of the Heidelberg Planetary Health Hub at Heidelberg University and one of the two coordinators of the European Lancet Countdown Report on Health and Climate Change. Prof. Rocklöv: “We have to take a comprehensive view of these threats in order to identify the most impacted population groups and develop effective measures.”

Geoinformation scientist Prof. Dr. Alexander Zipf sees it as, above all, necessary to fill gaps in geographic research data and monitoring. “In the regions with the highest risks there is still a shortfall of official environmental and health data,” says the scientist, who does his research at Heidelberg University’s Institute of Geography and heads HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology). “When we connect key data from observing the Earth with locally generated geodata we can identify regions that have long been overlooked. That way we can counteract inequalities that were invisible before.“

In their paper the researchers – who also include political scientist Prof. Dr Jale Tosun and eco-epidemiologist Dr Marina Treskova – set out a number of further measures, such as intensifying research on socio-ecological feedback cycles. They argue in favor of also embedding health impact assessment in climate policy planning as an analytic and steering instrument. Its purpose would be to provide information about which population groups benefit healthwise from measures and which ones are disadvantaged – even before the measures are carried out. The goal is a holistic policy linking climate-policy approaches to contain climate change, protection of biodiversity and reducing environmental pollution with measures to prevent inequality of health chances and promote health equity.