چکیده:
Adaptation to climate change is important and necessary because climate change is already happening and substantial impacts in the future are inevitable. Successful adaptation will require individual as well as collective action at the community, national and international level in order to reduce the direct and indirect impacts on health. This paper briefly summarises the likely impacts of climate change on health, globally, but focuses on adaptive measures that might be undertaken in New Zealand.
Climate change will have a wide variety of health impacts; many are predictable but some not. Higher maximum temperatures will lead to water shortages, occupational health concerns for outdoor workers, increased heat related deaths and illnesses, and contribute to an extended range of some pest and disease vectors. In some areas, there will be increased droughts leading to forest fires, increasing hospital admissions, while in other areas more intense rainfall will lead to mudslides, flooding and contaminated water supplies. More intense weather events are likely to increase the risk of infectious disease epidemics and the erosion of low-lying and coastal land. Indirect effects of climate change, such as mental health problems, are likely to occur from economic instability and forced migration.