In June the Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA) published a new discussion paper Towards a National Strategy on Climate, Health, and Well-being for Australia.
CPD fellow Fiona Armstrong is the founder and Executive Director of CAHA and a co-author of the discussion paper.
The paper cites strong empirical evidence that climate change poses significant immediate and long term impacts to the health of Australians, including in the following areas. The paper also examines national mitigation and adaptation policies, with a particular focus on how effectively they acknowledge and respond to health-related impacts of climate change.
The paper finds that, despite the significant potential for ambitious mitigation policies to benefit human health and lead to substantial cost savings, health and the health sector have been afforded little consideration in the development of national climate change policy in Australia. It calls for a national strategy for climate, health and wellbeing that seeks to:
- Establish meaningful national emissions reductions targets and policies
- Establish effective governance arrangements
- Develop a sustainable and resilient healthcare sector
- Promote education and awareness
- Strengthen communication and collaboration
- Re-establish national research capacity.
You can read the discussion paper and CAHA’s recommendations in full here: http://caha.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/CAHA-Discussion-Paper-v04.pdf.
Related work on climate, health and wellbeing
Also in June, Fiona Armstrong’s provided a scorecard for Croakey to track how the major parties policies on climate and health stacked up in the 2016 federal election.
Last year, CPD Policy Director Rob Sturrock spoke about how climate change will impact human security and community health at the Third Population Health Congress in Hobart. This drew on CPD’s 2015 report The Longest Conflict which examined how climate change would impact defence and security in Australia and our region.
