The Faculty of Public Health welcomes today’s report ‘Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’ from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The report clearly highlights the ‘increasingly severe, interconnected and often irreversible impacts of climate change on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human systems’ and identifies how we can work to reduce these impacts for current and future generations.
The evidence laid out in the report shows that international agreements and actions by individuals, communities and countries to date have not been enough – and that we continue to face unprecedented consequences as a result of the climate emergency.
The report recognises that climate change is directly impacting the health of populations, particularly affecting those already facing disadvantage – who are also the least likely to have contributed to the climate emergency we face. This is true on a global scale, as well as across our own country and local communities.
The Faculty’s Climate and Health Committee and Sustainable Development Special Interest Group have been leading work in raising awareness and summarising the evidence for interventions on climate change, and will be using this latest report in supporting our workforce and health sector in taking further actions to reduce the impact of the crisis and protect our health.
You can read the Faculty’s Climate and Health Strategy 2021 – 25 here.
