Climate change will harm human health, and successful strategies to mitigate the extent of the change will restrict that harm. But new studies published in The Lancet show that appropriate mitigation strategies will themselves have additional and independent effects on health, most of them beneficial. The potential value of these co-benefits has not so far been given sufficient prominence in international negotiations.
The Lancet studies, supported by a global partnership of funders, were undertaken by an international team of researchers with the aim of informing discussions at the 2009 Copenhagen conference of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Authored by an international group of public health, environmental, and other scientists, each focuses on one sector in which greenhouse-gas emissions need to be reduced. These sectors are household energy use, urban land transport, electricity generation, and food and agriculture. A fifth study reviews the effect on health of short-lived green-house pollutants, which are produced in several sectors.
Full-text – http://download.thelancet.com/flatcontentassets/series/health-and-climate-change.pdf, Nov. 25, 2009
