Multiple health benefits of adaptation measures

About climate adaptation measures

Climate adaptation measures:

  • involve introducing policies, programs or actions that seek to minimise or avoid harm to people caused by climate change
  • can be effectively co-designed and delivered by community members and community groups (known as community-led adaptation)
  • require inter-sectoral collaboration when led by government, and are implemented across levels and scales (i.e. local, state, national)
  • can address health and other inequalities across different groups of people if carefully designed
  • can also achieve emissions reduction (mitigation) and other benefits when implemented
  • often need to be tailored to local contexts and based on community needs to optimise health benefits
  • rely on the collection of environmental, health and other data over time to monitor and respond to changes
  • may require additional resourcing (e.g. personnel, funding) during and after extreme events, particularly to support health and social services systems
  • can enhance a community’s resilience through increasing local adaptive and coordination capacity, self-organisation, innovation and recovery.

Why are adaptation measures important for health?

Climate change is already causing harms to health by exposing people directly and indirectly to increased frequency and severity of heatwaves, wildfires, floods and drought. Populations considered at greatest risk to experiencing impacts include children, people over the age of 65, people with existing health conditions, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and marginalised groups. These populations may already be susceptible to poor health outcomes or experience inequalities, which can be exacerbated in a changing climate.

Well-designed adaptation measures can help to address these health inequalities, reducing the likelihood that people, including those most at-risk of poor health outcomes, are impacted. Further, well designed adaptation measures can help to build the resilience (capacity to tolerate climate change, maintaining function and identity) of people to future extreme weather events. When measures are not carefully planned, they can inadvertently increase the risk of negative health outcomes (known as maladaptation). Measures, particularly nature-based solutions, must be designed carefully to avoid creating health risks from diseases associated with animals and plants, such as mosquitos, rats, ticks and algae.

What are key characteristics of the health benefits of climate adaptation measures?

Health benefits from implementing adaptation measures:

  • can be achieved through numerous modifiable pathways
  • can be direct and/or indirect, physical and/or mental in nature
  • can occur immediately, intermediately and/or longer-term depending on the intervention pathway
  • need to be pursued alongside mitigation measures, as there are limits to adaptation
  • are estimated through a variety of study designs and methods, including cross-sectional, experimental and longitudinal observational studies
  • are an increasingly important consideration in all countries given different at-risk populations
  • have been shown in some circumstances to offset some or all of the costs associated with their implementation.

What additional benefits can arise from implementing climate adaptation measures?

  • cultural, spiritual and social benefits through improved placed-based connections
  • ecosystem benefits through improved biodiversity
  • economic benefits through avoided health and social system, and broader costs
  • resource efficiency benefits through changes in the selection of resources/materials
  • conflict and disaster resilience benefits through enhanced community literacy and preparedness
  • equity benefits through well-designed policies that prioritise those at greatest risk of experiencing impacts
  • enhanced community literacy, preparedness and connection

What additional research or resourcing is needed on the health benefits of climate adaptation measures?

There is currently limited research on health benefits in:

  • agriculture
  • marine ecosystems
  • non-urban settings
  • understanding and characterising causal pathways between interventions and health outcomes given challenges with using certain methodologies (e.g. follow-up intervention studies, case-control studies, cohort studies)
  • relation to sexual and reproductive health outcomes
  • certain populations, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
  • in developing countries, given many studies have been undertaken in North America or Europe
  • broader engagement with the concept through interdisciplinary research teams
  • understanding how health benefits currently inform policy and decision-making in different settings

Additional investments are needed to support:

  • characterising the cost-effectiveness and economic sustainability of different adaptation measures
  • quantification of health co-benefits
  • collaborations between key stakeholders and decision-makers
  • capacity building across levels of government within and across countries
  • the development of case studies and exemplars that enable replication in other settings
  • access to additional data sources.

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The development of this resource was funded through a VicHealth Impact Research Grant. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of VicHealth. We also acknowledge the generous contributions of state and local government policymakers who co-designed this resource.

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