POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change; is “a change of climate which attributed directly or indirectly to human activities that alter the composition of the global atmosphere and which are in addition to natural climate change variability observed over comparable time periods (URT 2012). Climate change may affect one or more seasons and involves changes in one or more aspects of the weather such as rainfall, temperature or winds. Climate change poses a serious threat to countries especially developing countries which are struggling to sustain their livelihoods and maintain food security.

Climate change can be accelerated by both natural and human (anthropogenic) activities. Natural phenomenon that causes climate change includes continental drift, volcanic eruptions and differences in oceanic currents. However the recent climate change situation is mainly attributed to anthropocentric activities. Some of the anthropogenic activities that lead to climate change include burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil from industrial activities and transportation. Other activities that may attributes to the rise of climate change include bushfires, deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices and animal husbandry, but at a relative lower level than fossil fuel sources.

In this context, both natural and anthropogenic activities lead to increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), Nitrogen tri-fluoride (NF3) and Nitrous Oxide (N2O) that cause an increase in global temperature resulting into global warming. Various statistics prove out that, in the recent years, the global climate has been changing faster than expected, mainly due to the fact that over the last 200 years human development and industrialization in developed countries have led to faster changes in the atmosphere caused by increased concentration of greenhouse gases that results to increase in average earth temperature. In addition to that, the phenomenon which causes the average earth temperature to increase is known as the “greenhouse effect”.

Climate change has a great impact on the life of human being in all aspects of life, politically, socially, economically as well as cultural aspects. Climate change affect most of the sectors in developing countries including; agricultural sector, forestry and ecosystems,  energy , water resources, tourism, wetlands, coastal and marine resources as well as health sector.

In case of human health, climate change poses a lot of challenges on human health, the trend of human health status now days is worse compared to the past days. It is argued that the rapid change in climate is among of the six key risk drivers in Africa that accelerate the occurrence of some hazards including, flash floods, droughts, storms and earthquakes which cause disasters including  health disasters to human being (UNISDR 2017).

Therefore climate change influence the emergence of diseases and provide conducive environments for the survival of some vectors-causing diseases to the areas where those vectors never existed before, in which to a large extent affect human health. For example there already reported incidences of epidemic malaria especially in highland areas that were traditionally free from mosquitoes and malaria such as highland areas of Tanga, Kilimanjaro, Iringa, Kagera and Mbeya (URT 2013). Climate change has both negative and positive impacts on human health and the following are the impacts of climate change on human health;

NEGATIVE IMPACTS

Climate change causes vector-borne diseases; due to climate change, the tropical African climate is seemed to be favorable to most major vector-borne diseases, including malaria, plague, Rift valley and yellow fever. The continent has high diversity of vector- species complexes that have a potential to redistribute themselves to new climate driven habitats leading to new diseases patterns. These organisms have different sensitivities to temperature and precipitation. For example El Nino Oscillation (ENSO) unstable climate condition in the pacific in 19997-1998 led to exceptional rainfall patterns across East Africa, resulting in several dramatic malaria epidemics across the sub-region (URT 2014).  All these diseases affect human health to a large extent especially malaria.

Climate change influence extreme weather events; there is an evidence that natural events such as heat waves, droughts, floods and storms are becoming more common and more intense as Earth’s climate warm.  Thus more intense events pose more risk to human health. For example storms and floods may cause more potential deaths and injuries. In addition, flooding can be followed by outbreaks of diseases, such as cholera, especially when water and sanitation services are damaged by such event. For example in early 2018 flood affected many people in Tanzania, the total number of people affected reached to 15, 862  for Dares Salaam, Zanzibar and Arusha. (IFRC 2018). Therefore all these problems are the results of climate change on the earth’s surface.

Climate change may cause morbidity and Mortality; Climate change may accelerate high rate of morbidity and Mortality especially to the elderly people with Cardiovascular or respiratory disease. Apart from heat waves, high temperatures also can increase ground-level ozone and hasten the onset of the pollen season, contributing to asthma attacks. Therefore these increase a threat to human health especially to the developing countries that are seemed to be victims of climate change.

Climate stimulates the increase of malnutrition diseases; Agricultural sector is extremely sensitive to climate variability. Rising temperature, more frequent drought and floods can compromise food security. Increase in Malnutrition is expected to be high in the countries where the majority of the populations depend on rain-fed subsistence farming. Malnutrition much of it caused by periodic droughts, is already responsible for an estimated 3.5 million deaths each year globally. Malnutrition affects children, women, elders and even poor people as a results decrease the productive capacity of people in socio-economic activities.

Climate change undermines the health-related Millennium Development Goals; there are some global millennium goals in which its progressions are directly hindered by the existence of current climate change. Climate change hinder the reduction efforts of child Mortality, Improvement of maternal health and combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases. This also to a large extent poses a challenge to human health since the programs for dealing with human livelihoods problems are affected by climate change. For example Sustainable Millennium Goals no. 1 (No poverty) and no.3 (good health and well being), (UNDP 2015).

  

Climate change may cause Cancers and skin diseases; due to the situation of rapid climate change in today’s, world, there are also rapid increase of cancers and skin diseases which highly affecting human health and life in general. Increase of temperature is a causative agent of skin diseases. Now days there are many cases reported for cancers on how it affects people not only developed countries but also the developing countries at large.

POSITIVE IMPACTS

Improvement of technology; it is unshakable truth that for solution to take place, problem must exist. Therefore climate change strengthen the innovation and improvement of technology especially health related technologies which could be used to cure and treat health problems resulted from climate change. For example Respiratory diseases, cancers, skin infectious disease, cholera, asthma and malaria in which all these diseases are the impacts of climate change. World Laboratory Scientists are struggling every day to find out various technologies which will help to deal with Climate change related diseases effectively.

Stimulate research findings and establishment of research centers; Climate change paves a way for scientific researchers to make investigations concerning climate change in order to come up with solutions on how the current world will tackle with climate change and to mitigate its devastating impacts to human health. Every day there is a rise of diseases caused by climate change and various progressive researches are conducted in order to find out the solutions to deal with health problems brought by climate change.

Improvement of health and medical services; health and medical services are improved to a large extent in order to increase capacities of providing services to the victims of floods who have got injuries, malnutrition, respiratory disease, cholera and malaria. Various hospitals, dispensaries and health centre as well as medicines are increased to provide treatment to the diseases and health problems resulted from climate change. Therefore this is also a fruit of climate change.

Establishment of organizations, programmes and strategic plans for dealing  with health problems; due to the rapid increase of climate change and its impacts on human health, there are some organizations which were established to deal with health problems resulted from climate change and human health in general.  For instance World Health Organization (WHO) and long term strategic plans such as National Malaria Strategic Plan 2014-2020 as well as National Malaria Control Programme.

Generally, increased diseases incidences due to climate change reduce labour productivity in various development undertakings. Climate change is likely also increase Occupational health risks particularly associated with increasing temperature at work places. Therefore there is a need to combats climate change so as to reduce its impacts on human health especially in developing countries like Tanzania.

REFERENCES

 United Republic of Tanzania (2012). Guidelines for Integrating Climate Change Adaptation into National Sectoral Policies, Plans and Plans and Programmes of Tanzania: Vice President Office. Gvt Printer Dar es Salaam.

United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (2017). Annual report.

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (2018). Emergency Plan of Action. Tanzania: Floods.

United Republic of Tanzania (2014). National Malaria Strategy Plan 2014-2020. Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. Gvt Printer Dar es Salaam.

United Nations Development Programme (2015). Sustainable Development goals.

United Republic of Tanzania (2013). Climate Change Adaptation Information Toolkit for Farming Communities in Tanzania.

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