Human consumption and production activities are damaging our global ecosystems and the resources, and systems that we rely on as a species for health, wellbeing and survival. Our economies are largely based on ‘take-make-consume-dispose’ models that impoverish our basic global resources at an unprecedented rate, destroying biodiversity, generating pollution which is leading to climate change, poor health and environmental unsustainability. Our transport, energy and food production systems generate high levels of pollution that damage health. According to the recent Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (2019) the Earth’s biodiversity has suffered a catastrophic decline unprecedented in human history due to human impact on the environment in the past half-century. An estimated 82 percent of wild mammal biomass has been lost, while 40 percent of amphibians, almost a third of reef-building corals, more than a third of marine mammals, and 10 percent of all insects are threatened with extinction. Carbon dioxide emissions have doubled and plastic pollution has increased tenfold since 1980, and each year 300–400 million tons of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes from industrial facilities are dumped into the world’s oceans and rivers. Climate protection plays a particularly important part in the transformation towards sustainability, as it is a condition sine qua non for sustainable development: although climate protection alone cannot guarantee the conservation of the natural life-support systems on which humanity depends, it is nevertheless foreseeable that without effective climate protection, mankind will soon have to do without some essential development opportunities. Sustainable solutions can thus reinforce each other, creating a win-win situation.
RG 1.1 Effects of climate change on human health and forecasts
Better insight on health effects
Better forecast models for health impacts
RG 1.2 Mitigation and adaptation, implementation research on interventions, co-benefits and risks
Development and health impact assessment of mitigation measures
Development and Health Impact Assessment of adaptation measures
RG 1.3 Incorporate transdisciplinary planetary health approaches (including biodiversity loss and ecosystem imbalance)
Transdisciplinary research activities and capacity
Research on the evaluation and quantification of major health risk related to climate change
Research on ecosystems biodiversity and health
Integrated surveillance systems
Research on improved risk communication