14 October 2024, Berlin: Federal Chancellor (SPD) Olaf Scholz speaks at the “World Health Summit” … [+]
When Rohingya refugees arrived in Bangladesh in 2017, their shelters were poorly ventilated and used plastic sheets that needed frequent replacement, posing health risks during periods of high heat.
So icddr,b, an international health research center based in Bangladesh, innovated using Jute, a plant-based material that enabled “nature-based housing that is heat resistant and salt water resistant,” said Dr. Farjana Jahan, an associate scientist at icddr,b.
As Bangladesh ranks as the second largest producer of fibers that include Jute, the organization’s approach provided a smart model for communities seeking to address their unique challenges at the intersection of the environment and human health. “So we’re not only reducing plastic waste pollution, deforestation,” Jahan explained, “but we’re using our local resources to do something sustainable.”
Jahan shared this experience at last week’s World Health Summit in Berlin during a Rockefeller Foundation-supported session focused on how frontline communities are developing innovative solutions to address climate-related health threats and how funders can augment these efforts.
Thousands of attendees at the conference, which included Bill Gates, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, shared insights on the most pressing contemporary health issues, including the importance of strong community engagement to drive investment forward. in the treatment of climate – health problems.
“One thing we have seen in Bangladesh is that a shelter – a cyclone shelter – was built on the wrong side of the river,” explained Vanina Laurent-Ledru, director general of the S Foundation – Sanofi Collective. “When the cyclone hit, the community could not cross the river mainly because the local community was not consulted. So that’s the kind of adaptation opportunity that we’re missing if you’re not doing the right work with communities.”
Working closely with communities on the ground to deal with the health impacts of climate change is critical everywhere, from a tropical monsoon area like Bangladesh to a tropical rainforest like the Amazon.
For example, the water level in a major tributary of the Amazon River has recently dropped to a 122-year nadir, complicating traditional ways of life for indigenous communities. “People are usually accustomed and adapted to live with floods in the Amazon, but not with extreme drought,” said Daniel Aristizábal, regional head for the Amazon at the Amazon Conservation Team.
As a result, climate change is disrupting the “ecological calendar” that the region’s residents rely on, fueling food insecurity and “a whole set of psychological effects” that have been drawn from conversations with indigenous people, Aristizábal explained.
Involving indigenous communities in solutions to these health problems arising from climate change is a synergistic process. “It’s not about learning from Indigenous people, but now it’s about learning with because the factors are new,” said Aristizábal. “So this traditional knowledge needs to work together with health practitioners, with government officials, with the NGO sectors, with academia to create a new knowledge that fits the forest and the changing forest.
Importantly, this synergistic knowledge exchange can be enhanced in the digital age, enabling local knowledge on climate-health impacts to become globally applicable.
“I think it’s incredibly important that we, first of all, speak the same language, and in this space of climate effects on health, data and digital infrastructure is language,” said Dr. Gabriel Leung, executive director of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charitable Trust. Leung emphasized the need to “converge on architecture and data requirements so that we’re all talking about the same things and measuring similarly so that we can all get to the same place about now we’re starting to agree.”
Through dialogue highlighting climate-health interventions that have worked, this year’s World Health Summit laid the important groundwork for doing so.
*Note: The author moderated one of the World Health Climate-Health Summits panel to which this article refers.*