Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A v.110(21); 2013 May 21 PMC3666729 ;
A systematic review was conducted by a multidisciplinary team to analyze qualitatively best available scientific evidence on the effect of agricultural intensification and environmental
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changes on the risk of zoonoses for which there are epidemiological interactions between wildlife and livestock.
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Beat the heat: child health amid heatwaves in Europe and Central Asia finds that half of these children died from heat-related illnesses in their first year of life. Most children died during the su
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mmer months.
"Around half of children across Europe and Central Asia – or 92 million children – are already exposed to frequent heatwaves in a region where temperatures are rising at the fastest rate globally. The increasingly high temperatures can have serious health complications for children, especially the youngest children, even in a short space of time. Without care, these complications can be life-threatening,” said Regina De Dominicis UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia.
Heat exposure has acute effects on children, even before they are born, and can result in pre-term births, low birth weight, stillbirth, and congenital anomalies. Heat stress is a direct cause of infant mortality, can affect infant growth and cause a range of paediatric diseases. The report also notes that extreme heat caused the loss of more than 32,000 years of healthy life among children and teenagers in the region.
As the temperatures continue to rise, UNICEF urges governments across Europe and Central Asia to:
- Integrate strategies to reduce the impact of heatwaves including through National Determined Contributions (NDC), National Adaptation Plans (NAP), and disaster risk reduction and disaster management policies with children at the centre of these plans
Invest in heat health action plans and primary health care to more adequately support heat-related illness among children
- Invest in early warning systems, including heat alert systems
- Adapt education facilities to reduce the temperatures in the areas children play in and equip teachers with skills to respond to heat stress
- Adapt urban design and infrastructure including ensuring buildings, particularly those housing the most vulnerable communities are equipped to minimize heat exposure
- Secure the provision of safe water, particularly in countries with deteriorating water quality and availability.
UNICEF works with governments, partners and communities across the region to build resilience against heatwaves. This includes equipping teachers, community health workers and families with the skills and knowledge to respond to heat stress.
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In line with the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organisations which IFRC, ICRC and various Red Cross Red Crescent National Societ
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ies have endorsed, this short Guide aims to help practitioners integrate environmental and climate change considerations into their work. It has been developed primarily for logistics staff, administrative staff, and management. It is not necessary to be an environmental expert to use this Guide.
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A Guide to Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation
The road map sets global targets and milestones to prevent, control, eliminate or eradicate 20 diseases and disease groups as well as cross-cutting targets aligned with the Sustainable Development G
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oals. Three foundational pillars will support global efforts to achieve the targets: accelerate programmatic action (pillar 1), intensify cross-cutting approaches (pillar 2) and change operating models and culture to facilitate country ownership (pillar 3).
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Planning and Implementation Training. Myanmar
This training module on resilient development planning in Myanmar consists of a 2.5 hours session, at the end of which, the participants will:
a) Have a common understanding on development
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and disaster linkages.
b) Be able to identify the various factors which contribute towards disaster risk including climate change in Myanmar.
c) Be able to identify measures for risk resilient development process in Myanmar.
The three main learning units include:
1. Disaster and development linkages.
2. Components and drivers of disaster risk including climate change.
3. Mainstreaming disaster and climate risk reduction into development.
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This document sets out, therefore, to explain the socioeconomic value of investing in the fight against NTDs and highlights priorities for global investment attention. Our work was guided by the need not only for
additional funding
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and funders but also for the need to understand the current funding climate, in which value for money and the efficient use of resources to fill the most critical of gaps are more relevant than ever.
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Reporting on Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific: A Handbook for
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Journalists.
UNESCO Series on Journalism education.
It explores the essential aspects of climate change, including its injustices to vulnerable communities, especially women and girls and least developed countries, and provides examples of best practices and stories of hope unique to the region. It can be used as a resource for journalists to understand the science of climate change, as well as helping journalists to improve their reporting of the environmental, social, economic, political, technological and other angles of the story
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Climate change creates and exacerbates circumstances conducive to gender-based violence. Climate
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action must tackle gender-based violence.
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The discourse on climate change and migration has shifted from labelling migration merely as a consequence of
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climate impacts, to describing it as a form of human adaptation. This article explores the adaptation framing of the climate change and migration nexus and highlights its shortcomings and advantages. While for some groups, under certain circumstances migration can be an effective form of adaptation, for others it leads to increased vulnerabilities and a poverty spiral, reducing their adaptive apacities. Non-economic losses connected to a change of place further challenge the notion of successful adaptation. Even when migration improves the situation of a household, it may conceal the lack of action on climate change adaptation from national governments or the international community. Given the growing body of evidence on the diverse circumstances and outcomes of migration
in the context of climate change, we distinguish between reactive and proactive migration and argue for a precise differentiation in the academic debate
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Food and nutrition security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is subject to the relentless impact of conflict, epidemics and climate events t
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hat have persisted in the country for decades, further compounded by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Lack of infrastructure and investment in agriculture, health and human capital development combine to impede progress towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals 2 and 17. While there are several legal instruments and policies that promote food and nutrition security, poor coordination, weak national capacity and exponential population growth present serious obstacles to the achievement of zero hunger. Political instability and siloed sectoral responses to humanitarian and development needs have also affected results to date.
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Climate-induced water insecurity poses one of the biggest threats to humanity and will lead to more hunger, disease and displacement
Oxfam water
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engineers are having to drill deeper, more expensive and harder-to-maintain water boreholes used by some of the poorest communities around the world, more often now only to find dry, depleted or polluted reservoirs.
Today, during World Water Week, Oxfam publishes the first of its series of reports, “Water Dilemmas”, about the growing water crisis, in large part driven by global heating from greenhouse gas emissions. The report describes how climate change will impact water security in different regions, leading to more hunger, disease and displacement.
Carlos Calderon, Humanitarian Advocacy and Partnerships Lead for Oxfam Aotearoa said, “This new Oxfam research is focused on the global Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) situation, but it paints a picture that illustrates the complexity of elements that, combined, will continue to increasingly affect women, girls, boys and men in the decades to come. Changing weather, poverty, inequality, gender-based violence, political instability and conflicts are impacting the availability and quality of adequate water systems. All governments, particularly those from rich countries, should responsively take action at a global scale. The clock is ticking. Our children will judge us for our actions today, or for the lack of them.”
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Leishmaniasis is a climate-sensitive disease. Changes in temperature, rainfall, and humidity can have strong impacts on
the sandfly vector, altering their distribution
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and influencing their survival and population sizes. Increased temperatures shorten vector development time, reduce Leishmania parasite incubation time, and increase vector biting rates, allowing transmission
in areas not previously endemic for the disease. Poor and
marginalized communities will be hit disproportionately harder by
the effects of climate change, and droughts, famines, and floods
can also lead to displacement and migration of immunologically
naive people to areas where leishmaniasis is endemic, posing a
threat of leishmaniasis outbreaks.
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Who suffers Most from Extreme Weather Events? Weather-related Loss Events in 2019 and 2000 to 2019
The Global Climate Risk Index 2021 analyses and
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ranks to what extent countries and regions have been affected by impacts of climate related extreme weather events (storms, floods, heatwaves etc.). The most recent data available for 2019 and from 2000 to 2019 was taken into account.
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Conflict, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic effects of the Ukraine crisis are interacting to create new
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and worsen existing hunger hotspots, reversing the gains families had made to escape poverty.
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The BRACED Myanmar Alliance was a three-year project aiming to ‘build the resilience of 350,000 people across Myanmar to climate extremes’. The project worked in 7 states, 8 townships and 155 co
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mmunities. The main impact for project populations was intended to be ‘improved well-being and reduced loss and damage despite climate shocks’, and the project sought to do this by addressing immediate hazard-related needs at community level while encouraging longer-term solutions driven and delivered by communities and subnational and national government.
Community Resilience Assessments (CRAs) were the first activities delivered as part of the project, and the list of community-identified needs became the basis from which local-level project interventions were selected. The selection typically involved an infrastructure requirement (linked to addressing a natural hazard, and sometimes shared between communities); a package of livelihood support (assets and trainings); capacity-building on climate change/resilience topics; and village savings and loans association (VSLA) support. A particular emphasis was placed on women’s empowerment, and leadership trainings and support to women’s self-help groups were provided.
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The Manifesto was launched at a High Level Event in London on the 31st July 2019, where Emergency response mechanisms to address the Climate and Environmental Crisis are being explored. The Manifest
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o has been developed in response to the increasing international and United Nations evidence and understanding of the severity of our global climate and environmental crisis. This builds upon collaborative action to advance the InterAction Council's Dublin Charter, endorsed at its Plenary Session in 2017. The overall aim is to secure a healthy planet for the wellbeing of future generations for all, by placing the health of the planet at the heart of decision making and establishing emergency response mechanisms at global, national and community levels.
Now more than ever, we need courageous leadership to take crucial decisions and actions to secure a healthy planet for all, including the very existence of human civilization. The InterAction Council is encouraged by the boldness and energy of our younger generations, as well as the commitment expressed by the 30 organisations endorsing the Manifesto. The establishment of the Digital Platform for Planet, Place and People, a Hub of the Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health, will act as a collaborative mechanism to promote innovation and rapid responses as a common good. Going forward, we welcome everyone to become a Guardian to Secure a Healthy Planet for All, and to support this initiative in scaling up the ambitions laid out in the Manifesto.
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2020 was a year like no other. Amidst on-going humanitarian crises, largely fuelled by conflict and violence but also driven by the effects of climate cha
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nge – such as the largest locust infestation in a generation – the world had to contend with a global pandemic. In less than one year (March-December 2020), more than 82 million COVID-19 cases and 1.8 million deaths were recorded. In that timeframe, out of the global COVID-19 totals, 30 per cent of COVID-19 cases and 39 per cent deaths were recorded in GHRP countries.
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This book is aimed at policymakers in ministries of agriculture and national agricultural research institutes, as well as multilateral development banks and the private sector
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and provides guidance on various technology strategies and which to pursue as competition grows for land, water, and energy across productive sectors and even increasingly across borders. Climate change, population, and income growth will drive food demand in the coming decades. Food prices are also expected to significantly increase between 2005 and 2050 and the number of people at risk of hunger in the developing world would grow from 881 million in 2005 to more than a billion people by 2050. This book endeavors to respond to the challenge of growing food sustainably without degrading our natural resource bas
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This is the seventeenth annual publication of the Global Hunger Index (GHI), a report jointly published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe.
The 2022 Global Hunger Index (GHI) brings us face to face with a grim reality. The toxic cocktail of
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conflict, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic had already left millions exposed to food price shocks and vulnerable to further crises. Now the conflict in Ukraine—with its knock-on effects on global supplies of and prices for food, fertilizer, and fuel—is turning a crisis into a catastrophe.
But the speed and severity of the global food crisis reflects the fact that millions of people were already living on the precarious edge of hunger—a legacy of past failures to build more just, sustainable, and resilient food systems. This year’s report therefore focuses on food systems transformation and local governance.
According to the 2022 GHI, Hunger is at alarming levels in 5 countries—Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, and Yemen— and is provisionally considered *alarming *in 4 additional countries— Burundi, Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria. In a further 35 countries, hunger is considered serious, based on 2022 GHI scores and provisional designations.
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