“The World Health Organization has identified climate change as humanity’s greatest health threat,” says Natalie Hore, founder of Azraq, a UAE-based marine conservation organization. “This is because the world’s climate crisis has an impact on our most basic needs, such as access to clean, safe water supplies, food, air, and shelter.” According to WHO estimates, climate change will result in an additional 250,000 deaths per year between 2030 and 2050 due to malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress. “Climate change is already affecting health in a variety of ways, notably by causing mortality and sickness from increasingly frosty environments,” the organization says. “Climate change is already impacting health in a variety of ways,” according to the organization, “including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms, and floods, food system disruption, increases in zoonoses and food-, water-, and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues.
“Climate change is also threatening “several of the social determinants of well health, such as livelihoods, equality, and access to health care and social support networks,” according to the WHO. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C is necessary to avoid millions of climate-related fatalities and “avert catastrophic health impacts.” Even an increase of 1.5°C, however, is not safe, with every tenth of a degree that the temperature climbs taking a “severe toll on people’s lives and health.”
Source: https://www.livehealthymag.com/cop26-pledges-and-how-the-climate-crisis-will-impact-the-uae/