Human society will face new risks and pressures due to climate change impact on the global environment. These include: food shortages and hunger, alteration of water resources, damage of physical infrastructure (particularly by sea-level rise and extreme weather events). Economic activities, human settlements, and human health will experience many direct and indirect effects. The poor and disadvantaged are the most vulnerable to the negative consequences of climate change.

How to protect health from climate change?

Responses include adaptation of people and ecosystems to future climatic regimes, and a major effort for stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (without emissions-control policies motivated by concerns about climate change, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are expected to have increased by 75-350% since the year 1750).

WHO/Europe advices on public health responses such as prevention, mitigation and adaptation, and is engaged in research on the assessment of health effects of climate change

Topics include health effects of extreme weather events, water-, food- and vectorborne diseases, and allergic disorders. Activities are mostly carried out through collaborative projects, such as: 

• climate change and adaptation strategies for human health in Europe (cCASHh); 
• climate change and research impacts: the Mediterranean environment (CIRCE);
• EuroHEAT;
• assessment and prevention of acute health effects and weather conditions in Europe (PHEWE);
• the European Phenology Network (EPN).

The international community is tackling this challenge through the UN Climate Change Convention (1992), which seeks to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at safe levels.