Coronavirus Pandemic Underscores Climate Health Threats

Health experts warn that vulnerability to climate-related health threats is likely greater than previously believed. This extends from healthcare facilities built in the path of floodplains and wildfires, inabilities to track outbreaks, to privileged classes realizing that they can’t escape ill-equipped local healthcare systems during a lockdown. This new realization has led some countries to begin plans for new hospitals and additional funding to help secure vaccines. The virus has also made clear the nexus of extreme poverty and pandemic, bringing home to some the realities of the deep interconnectedness a subsistence farmer has to food insecurity and a laborer has to rising global temperatures. Elena Villalobos Prats, World Health Organization climate change and public health expert says two-thirds of the countries party to the 2015 Paris Agreement have considered climate threats to health in its national climate plans but only half have adaptation plans to its health systems, while only 0.5% of international climate finance is spent on health threats. Experts are now focused on whether the novel coronavirus crisis can be a learning tool to drive awareness of global vulnerability to better prepare the world for the next big health threat of climate change. (Reuters)