Injustice has a cure
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
They bent it faster
The available science is undeniably clear. Unchecked consumption and fossil fuel dependency have put people and the planet in danger, drastically altering weather patterns and leading to extreme temperatures, more powerful natural disasters, and widespread pollution. As Partners In Health has seen firsthand in its work around the world, climate change isn’t just a threat to our environment—it’s a threat to our health.
Take malnutrition—a condition that already affects billions of people worldwide. As temperatures rise and rainfall patterns become uneven, farmers in the world’s poorest regions will struggle to produce staple foods, heightening the risk of malnutrition and undernutrition. Warmer temperatures have already worsened diet quality and increased malnutrition among young children in Asia, Africa, and South America.
Flooding and drought in Malawi, for example, have led to poor crop yields, putting more people at risk of malnutrition, and making PIH’s food and housing support there, in addition to medical care, critical.
Haiti, where PIH began working nearly three decades ago, is the most vulnerable country in Latin America and the Caribbean to climate change. A 2017 USAID report on Haiti listed multiple factors that made the country more vulnerable to climate change, including: topography, land-use practices, and high population density.
“More than half of the country’s population lives in dense coastal cities, nearby floodplains, and in areas with steep slopes susceptible to landslides,” the report states. “Widespread deforestation and unmaintained drainage infrastructure increase Haiti’s vulnerability to hurricanes, storm surges, and flooding, while increasing temperatures during dry months, strengthening tropical storms, and unpredictable rainfall patterns will likely worsen climate impacts on already sensitive sectors.”
Globally, heart and lung disease are other clinical areas where climate change is expected to take a toll. As extreme heat becomes more common, air pollution will worsen, and more people will die from cardiovascular and respiratory disease. Those suffering from airborne infectious diseases, such a tuberculosis, will further struggle to breathe. And an ever-increasing number of wildfires means that more people will be exposed to dangerous levels of smoke, putting them at risk for lung disease and other respiratory issues.
Infectious diseases are also projected to become more common as climate change escalates. Floods create breeding grounds for mosquitoes and contaminate water supplies, putting people at risk of insect- and water-borne diseases, as PIH has seen in cholera outbreaks in Haiti and Sierra Leone.
Over the past few decades, the number of emerging infectious diseases has skyrocketed due to warming temperatures and the destruction of forests and wildlife, bringing humans into increased contact with disease-carrying animals. The origins of COVID-19 remain unclear, but a World Health Organization inquiry is investigating the possibility of animal-to-human, as was the case with Ebola in the West Africa outbreak from 2014 to 2016.”
As Indigenous people around the world have always understood, our health and the health of our planet are interconnected. Our survival depends on each other. Climate change is a global health emergency.
