October 14, 2024, Berlin: Chancellor (SPD) Olaf Scholz speaks at the “World Health Summit” … [+]
When Rohingya refugees arrived in Bangladesh in 2017, their shelters were inadequately ventilated and used plastic sheeting that had to be replaced regularly, posing health risks during periods of high heat.
So icddr,b, an international health research center based in Bangladesh, innovated by using Jutin, a plant-based material that enables “nature-based housing that is heat-resistant and saltwater-resistant.” said Dr. Farjana Jahan, associate professor at icddr,b.
Because Bangladesh is the second largest producer of the fiber that makes up Jutin, the organization’s approach provided a smart model for communities looking to address their unique challenges at the intersection of the environment and human health. “So we are not only reducing pollution from plastic waste and deforestation,” says Jahan explained“but we use our local resources to make something sustainable.”
Jahan shared this experience last week at the World Health Summit in Berlin during a Rockefeller Foundation-backed session focused on how frontline communities are developing innovative solutions to address climate-related health threats and how funders can boost these efforts.
The conference’s thousands of participants, including Bill Gates, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, shared insights on today’s most pressing health challenges, including the importance of strong community engagement to drive investments in to promote climate action. -health problems.
“One thing we have seen in Bangladesh is that one shelter – one cyclone shelter – has been built on the wrong side of the river,” explained Vanina Laurent-Ledru, Director General of Foundation S – the Sanofi Collective. “When the cyclone hit, the community was unable to cross the river mainly because the local community had not been consulted. So that’s the kind of adaptability that we miss if you don’t work well with the communities.”
Working closely with communities on the ground to address the health impacts of climate change is critical everywhere from a tropical monsoon region like Bangladesh to a tropical rainforest like the Amazon.
For example the water level of a major tributary of the Amazon recently sunk to a low of 122 years, complicating traditional ways of life for indigenous communities. “People are usually used and adapted to living with flooding in the Amazon, but not with extreme drought,” shared Daniel Aristizábal, Amazon Regional Lead 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 range of psychological effects” that have emerged from conversations with indigenous people, Aristizábal says. explained.
Involving indigenous communities in solutions to these health problems arising from climate change is a synergistic process. “It’s not about learning from the indigenous people, but now it’s about learning with because the factors are new,” Aristizábal said. “So this traditional knowledge needs to work with health professionals, with government officials, with NGO sectors, with academia to create new knowledge that adapts to the forest and the changing forest.”
Importantly, this synergistic knowledge exchange can be scaled up in the digital age, making local insights into climate and health impacts globally applicable.
“I think it’s incredibly important that we speak the same language first and foremost, and in this space of climate impacts on health, data and digital infrastructure, that’s the language,” said Dr. Gabriel Leung, Executive Director of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. Leung emphasized the need to “bring the data architecture and requirements together so that we’re all talking about the same things and measuring the same things, so that we can all get to the same point where we’re starting to agree.”
Through dialogue highlighting climate-health interventions that have worked, this year’s World Health Summit laid an important foundation to do just that.
*Note: The author moderated one of the World Health Summit climate-health conferences panels to which this article refers.*