Human dimensions and habitation (12/17/2007)

In 2005, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that changes to the earth's climate was already causing about five million extra cases of severe illness a year and more than 150,000 extra deaths. By 2030, however, the number of climate-related diseases is likely to more than double, with a dramatic increase in heat-related deaths caused by heart failure, respiratory disorders, the spread of infectious diseases and malnutrition from crop failures. Countries with coastlines along the Indian and Pacific Oceans and sub-Saharan Africa would suffer a disproportionate share of the extra health burden. "Many of the most important diseases in poor countries, such as diarrhoea and malnutrition, are highly sensitive to climate," said Dr Campbell-Lendrum who took part in the WHO study. "The health sector is already struggling to control these diseases and climate change threatens to undermine these efforts”.

The number of people at risk of flooding by coastal storm surges is projected to increase from the current 75 million to 200 million by 2080, when sea levels may have risen by 40 centimetres. A separate study of how rising temperatures will affect water supplies found that severe shortages were likely to affect up to a sixth of the world's population who currently rely on melting snow and glacial "fossil" ice. Parts of China and India, where vast population centres rely on melting ice from the Himalayas for their supply of drinking water, are highly vulnerable to global warming, the study found.

People living west of the Andes are also likely to suffer from a dwindling water supply once the glaciers have disappeared, the study found. Peru had already suffered a 25 per cent reduction in water supplies over the past 30 years. "Climate warming is a certainty and the bottom line in this analysis is that the impact of warming and the long-term prognosis is clear and very dire," said Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. "It's especially clear that regions in Asia and South America are headed for a water-supply crisis because once that fossil water has gone, it's gone."

From the Climate Change Futures final report (nov 2005)

(project from the Center of Health and Global Environment Harvard Medical School)

http://www.climatechangefutures.org/pdf/CCF_Report_Final_10.27.pdf