scholarly journals Integrating Public Health into Climate Change Policy and Planning: State of Practice Update

Author(s):  
Mary Fox ◽  
Christopher Zuidema ◽  
Bridget Bauman ◽  
Thomas Burke ◽  
Mary Sheehan

Policy action in the coming decade will be crucial to achieving globally agreed upon goals to decarbonize the economy and build resilience to a warmer, more extreme climate. Public health has an essential role in climate planning and action: “Co-benefits” to health help underpin greenhouse gas reduction strategies, while safeguarding health—particularly of the most vulnerable—is a frontline local adaptation goal. Using the structure of the core functions and essential services (CFES), we reviewed the literature documenting the evolution of public health’s role in climate change action since the 2009 launch of the US CDC Climate and Health Program. We found that the public health response to climate change has been promising in the area of assessment (monitoring climate hazards, diagnosing health status, assessing vulnerability); mixed in the area of policy development (mobilizing partnerships, mitigation and adaptation activities); and relatively weak in assurance (communication, workforce development and evaluation). We suggest that the CFES model remains important, but is not aligned with three concepts—governance, implementation and adjustment—that have taken on increasing importance. Adding these concepts to the model can help ensure that public health fulfills its potential as a proactive partner fully integrated into climate policy planning and action in the coming decade.

Author(s):  
Karen Alvarenga Oliveira

This chapter examines the climate change policy of Brazil. In 2010 at the Sixteenth Conference of Parties in Cancún, Brazil announced its voluntary national target of significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 36.1 per cent and 38.9 per cent of projected emissions by 2020. These targets were defined in the Brazilian National Policy on Climate Change (PNMC). The PNMC establishes principles, guidelines, and economic instruments for reaching the national voluntary targets. It relies on sectoral plans for mitigation and adaptation to climate change in order to facilitate the move towards a low-carbon economy. The PNMC defined various aspects related to the measurement of goals, formulation of sectoral plans and of action plans for the prevention and control of deforestation in all Brazilian biomes, and governance structure.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 4894 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saleem H. Ali ◽  
Kamila Svobodova ◽  
Jo-Anne Everingham ◽  
Mehmet Altingoz

According to the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index, Australia was ranked as the worst-performing country on climate change policy. The country has an ambivalent record of climate policy development as well as implementation, and has been criticized for its inaction. This paper considers why the country has been locked in climate policy “paralysis” through analyzing defining attributes of such a paralysis, and the tentative connections between domestic energy policies and international trade and development. We conducted a media content analysis of 222 articles and identified media narratives in three cases of energy projects in the country involving thermal coal exports, domestic renewable energy storage, and closure of a domestic coal power station. The analysis reveals that policy paralysis in Australian climate change policy can be traced back to the countervailing arguments that have been pervasive around domestic energy security, rural employment and international energy poverty. The political establishment has struggled to develop a sustainable consensus on climate change and the citizenry remains polarized. We also discuss how a “focusing event,” such as a major natural disaster can break the impasse but this is only possible if energy security at home, energy poverty abroad and employment imperatives across the board are clearly delineated, measured and prioritized.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luckrezia Awuor

The relevance of a public health frame in supporting the climate change impact awareness and consensus on actions is well recognized but largely underutilized. Overall, supporting public health’s capacity in climate change has focused on projecting and highlighting public health impacts due to climate change, identifying public health policy responses, and emphasizing public health role. The integration of the public health perspective in the discussion and communication of climate change ideas has remained elusive.<div>Climate change is also a complex social problem whose construction of meaning and actions is rooted in institutionalized language, discourse, and human interactions. Thus, understanding of the construction of the relevance of public health in climate change discourse is central to understanding the impediments of the public health frame application. Unfortunately, this has been a neglected area of research, and the dissertation responded to that gap. </div><div>To delineate the impediments of the public health frame, the study used the case study of the context of climate change policy discourse in the Province of Ontario (Canada) to examine the construction of public health relevance, the extent of public health frame application, and the systematic influences in the discourse.</div><div>The analysis of policy documents and key informant interviews revealed that the public health frame remained isolated from the primary focus of Ontario’s climate change policy discourse. Instead, Ontario’s historically and socially constructed climate change as an economic and political issue solved through market strategies and technological innovations forwarded by political, bureaucratic, and technological elites. The focus substantiated the types of structures and processes of policies and decisions, the relevant actors and knowledge, and the values supporting the discursive, normative, and strategic practices. Ontario’s focus also limited the utilization of the public health frame and the supporting capacities through the misalignment between public health and the provincial strategic actions, the lack of recognition and integration of public health roles, mandate and structures, and limited public health capacity building initiatives.</div><div>Therefore, public health framing as an endpoint of climate change discourse requires legitimation of public health in the underlying institutional structures for, and governance of, climate change. </div>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luckrezia Awuor

The relevance of a public health frame in supporting the climate change impact awareness and consensus on actions is well recognized but largely underutilized. Overall, supporting public health’s capacity in climate change has focused on projecting and highlighting public health impacts due to climate change, identifying public health policy responses, and emphasizing public health role. The integration of the public health perspective in the discussion and communication of climate change ideas has remained elusive.<div>Climate change is also a complex social problem whose construction of meaning and actions is rooted in institutionalized language, discourse, and human interactions. Thus, understanding of the construction of the relevance of public health in climate change discourse is central to understanding the impediments of the public health frame application. Unfortunately, this has been a neglected area of research, and the dissertation responded to that gap. </div><div>To delineate the impediments of the public health frame, the study used the case study of the context of climate change policy discourse in the Province of Ontario (Canada) to examine the construction of public health relevance, the extent of public health frame application, and the systematic influences in the discourse.</div><div>The analysis of policy documents and key informant interviews revealed that the public health frame remained isolated from the primary focus of Ontario’s climate change policy discourse. Instead, Ontario’s historically and socially constructed climate change as an economic and political issue solved through market strategies and technological innovations forwarded by political, bureaucratic, and technological elites. The focus substantiated the types of structures and processes of policies and decisions, the relevant actors and knowledge, and the values supporting the discursive, normative, and strategic practices. Ontario’s focus also limited the utilization of the public health frame and the supporting capacities through the misalignment between public health and the provincial strategic actions, the lack of recognition and integration of public health roles, mandate and structures, and limited public health capacity building initiatives.</div><div>Therefore, public health framing as an endpoint of climate change discourse requires legitimation of public health in the underlying institutional structures for, and governance of, climate change. </div>


Author(s):  
Gupta Joyeeta ◽  
Bosch Hilmer

This chapter describes the relationship between climate change and security. Successive reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have provided growing evidence of the impacts of climate change. Climate change can affect human well-being in terms of access to water, food, energy, and land, as well as in terms of risks to human health. Thus, climate change is seen as a driver of other socio-ecological problems worldwide. Climate change is also seen as a risk and threat multiplier, as it can exacerbate existing challenges faced by States, including poor governance institutions and poverty. However, climate change policy could potentially be a ‘threat minimizer’ if mitigation and adaptation measures are integrated into the development paradigm. Against this background, the chapter addresses the following issue: What is the nature of the security debate raised by the climate change issue and how is this being addressed within scholarly, policy, and legal fora? It looks at the different ways in which security has been defined in the literature and its diverse implications for law and policy.


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