Australian policymakers are being urged to meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement and include a strategy for the health impacts in its national climate policy.
Ahead of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, the Climate and Health Alliance launched its report outlining a framework for health and wellbeing to be included in Australia's climate change policy, drawing on knowledge and voices from Indigenous Australians and children.
The executive director of the Climate and Health Alliance, Fiona Armstrong, said health and medical experts and health stakeholders are speaking with one voice about the solutions.
"We have nothing to lose from implementing these kinds of policies," Ms Armstrong said on Friday at the online launch event for the report, entitled 'Healthy, Regenerative and Just'.
Ms Armstrong said the federal government's updated climate policy on Tuesday did not include a strategy for responding to health impacts arising from climate change, and the impacts on more vulnerable groups such as Indigenous Australians, those with pre-existing medical conditions and socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals.
"This report provides a report for the federal government to implement in cooperation with the states and territories to reduce emissions, tackle inequality and improve health through no regrets policies and initiatives," she said.
'Greatest health opportunity'
The report calls for the development of a climate, health and wellbeing strategy, which would be overseen by bodies including a national committee of health and climate change and related ministerial portfolios.
It outlines eight recommendations including a more rapid transition to net zero emissions by legislating a 2030 target of 75 per cent reduction in emissions below 2005 levels, reaching net zero by 2035 "as recommended by the best available science".
Other recommendations include the establishment of a multi-portfolio ministerial committee to oversee the development of a national strategy on climate, health and well-being.
It also calls for more support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander initiatives on environmental management and a progressive tax system to fund measures for climate resilience.
"Climate change is not all about doom and gloom. Climate change is also the greatest health opportunity," University of Sydney epidemiologist Ying Zhang said.
Associate Professor Zhang, part of the team behind the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, said since 2017 there has been growing engagement among different sectors of society - health, economic, politics, community - on understanding climate change from a public health perspective.
"I have to admit there are a lot of frustrations but we're seeing more and more engagement with stakeholders, especially in recent years," she said.
Risk of spreading disease, Nobel laureate warns
The Lancet Countdown 2021 report released last week found that in Australia in 2019, the extreme heat risks from climate change could be measured in mortality, hospital admissions and decreased physical activity.
The number of days when physical activity would have been suspended due to extreme heat risks more than doubled n 2019 compared with the five-year average between 2001 and 2005, according to the report.
"The health impacts from heat are largely preventable. Scientists have already provided solutions to reduce the health risks with some cost-effective interventions," the report said.
Ms Zhang said the federal government's updated climate targets as presented on Tuesday is a "positive step but inadequate to protect Australians' health from climate change".
Nobel Laureate for Medicine, Professor Peter Doherty, applauded the report, saying it underlined the multi-faceted nature of the health impacts arising from climate change, including water contamination, food insecurity and the spread of diseases.
Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty. Source: Supplied
"My particular area is infectious disease and immunity. As the world warms then insect species, which may be restricted to the warmer areas of the planet will move further away from the equator," he said.
"That will bring with it diseases like malaria, dengue - which in Australia, we don't have malaria and we experience dengue sporadically in the north of the country. Those diseases will move further south."
Severe impacts in regional Australia
Helen Haines, nurse and independent MP for the rural Victorian seat of Indi which contains bushfire-affected communities, said climate change has been a growing issue of concern for the electorate.
"What I have seen after so many years working in healthcare is the impact of the social determinants of health and the change when we have extreme heat days, the impact that has on our people who don't have air conditioning or who live in conditions that simply can't cope with really really hot days," she said.
"I have seen the impacts of poverty where people don't have access to the internet - and have very poor mobile phone connection. That is an appalling situation in rural Australia where the connectivity still remains very bad in many places."
Ms Haines said she is pushing to get support for a bill she has introduced in parliament - - to "ensure that everyday rural Australians truly benefit from an inevitable boom in the renewable energy space".
"I want to see across regional and rural Australia similar policies to what we see in places like Germany where 10 per cent of all renewable energy projects are owned by farmers," she said.
The annual cost from heat-related mortality alone is estimated to be around $6.8 billion.
