Journal Article > ResearchFull Text
J Clim Chang Health. 1 December 2024; Online ahead of print; 100373.; DOI:10.1016/j.joclim.2024.100373
Schwerdtle PN, Devine C, Berner-Rodoreda A, McMahon SA, Barnighausen K
J Clim Chang Health. 1 December 2024; Online ahead of print; 100373.; DOI:10.1016/j.joclim.2024.100373
INTRODUCTION
Climate change is contributing to humanitarian health crises. However, research on the intersection of climate change and health in humanitarian settings often prioritises understanding impacts over identifying solutions. This study adopts a solutions-oriented approach, engaging humanitarians working in medical projects to explore both existing and potential adaptation strategies to mitigate the adverse health effects of climate change.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The study involved 49 semi-structured qualitative interviews with humanitarian health workers from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) across 30 countries. Conducted in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic, the interviews focused on identifying adaptation solutions to address climate-related health impacts at individual, community, and organizational levels. Data were analysed using a hybrid coding approach, combining deductive and inductive techniques informed by framework analysis.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The research highlights a perception of high vulnerability and low readiness to address climate change in the studied countries, exposing an adaptation gap—the disparity between adaptation needs and current efforts. Initially, participants found it challenging to identify adaptation strategies, often focussing on mitigation (emission reduction) rather than adaptation. From the adaptation activities identified, we developed an ‘Adaptation Continuum’ framework, which ranges from maladaptation to resilience-building. Additionally, we created a matrix of climate change adaptation (CCA) examples to illustrate how health risks can be addressed in contexts characterised by high vulnerability and low adaptive capacity.
CONCLUSION
Health and humanitarian actors are witnessing the profound impacts of climate change on communities and projects worldwide. Despite ongoing efforts to adapt, there remains a lack of consensus on how to effectively operationalize these initiatives. This research introduces the ‘Adaptation Continuum’, a conceptual framework designed to guide the planning, implementation, and evaluation of adaptation activities in four key domains: knowledge and awareness, infrastructure and technological solutions, operational adaptation, and policy and advocacy.
Journal Article > ResearchFull Text
PLOS Clim. 6 March 2024; Volume 3 (Issue 3); e0000243.; DOI:10.1371/journal.pclm.0000243
McIver L, Beavon E, Malm A, Awad A, Uyen A, et al.
PLOS Clim. 6 March 2024; Volume 3 (Issue 3); e0000243.; DOI:10.1371/journal.pclm.0000243
This mixed-methods study focuses on the evidence of the health impacts of climate change on populations affected by humanitarian crises, presented from the perspective of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)–the world’s largest emergency humanitarian medical organisation. The Sixth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was used as the basis of a narrative review, with evidence gaps highlighted and additional literature identified relevant to climate-sensitive diseases and health problems under-reported in–or absent from–the latest IPCC report. An internal survey of MSF headquarters staff was also undertaken to evaluate the perceived frequency and severity of such problems in settings where MSF works. The findings of the survey demonstrate some discrepancies between the health problems that appear most prominently in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and those that are most relevant to humanitarian settings. These findings should be used to guide the direction of future research, evidence-based adaptations and mitigation efforts to avoid the worst impacts of climate change on the health of the world’s most vulnerable populations.
Technical Report > Policy Brief
Blume C, Dallatomasinas S, Devine C, Goikolea I, Guevara M, et al.
15 November 2023
Most of the over 70 countries Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors Without Borders (MSF) works in are in lower-income regions. They are facing not only humanitarian crises but also the most severe impacts of the climate emergency. In 2023, MSF continued to witness and respond to the consequences of extreme weather events around the world, including unprecedented flooding in South Sudan, severe cyclones in Myanmar and Madagascar, and the relentless heat and extended droughts that have driven millions to the edge of starvation throughout the Horn of Africa. This year, the organisation has also responded to epidemics of climate-sensitive diseases, including multiple concurrent cholera outbreaks and the rise of dengue and malaria in several areas, including in conflict-affected settings.
In a time of polycrisis, a simultaneous occurrence of multiple catastrophic events, MSF and other aid organisations are already struggling to meet the rising health and humanitarian needs. If human activities contributing to climate change and environmental degradation go unabated and unaddressed, including the continued dependence on fossil fuels, these needs will only escalate. With each fraction of a degree of global temperature rise, there will be further limitations on adaptation, and reckless losses and damages to lives, livelihoods, and general well-being.
Drawing on evidence from indicators in the 2023 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, MSF builds on previous experiences and messages with a focus on three key areas: MSF’s ongoing efforts to reduce its environmental impact; the challenges of adapting emergency humanitarian operations in a rapidly warming world; and the consequences of climate change when the capacities of communities to adapt are surpassed
In a time of polycrisis, a simultaneous occurrence of multiple catastrophic events, MSF and other aid organisations are already struggling to meet the rising health and humanitarian needs. If human activities contributing to climate change and environmental degradation go unabated and unaddressed, including the continued dependence on fossil fuels, these needs will only escalate. With each fraction of a degree of global temperature rise, there will be further limitations on adaptation, and reckless losses and damages to lives, livelihoods, and general well-being.
Drawing on evidence from indicators in the 2023 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, MSF builds on previous experiences and messages with a focus on three key areas: MSF’s ongoing efforts to reduce its environmental impact; the challenges of adapting emergency humanitarian operations in a rapidly warming world; and the consequences of climate change when the capacities of communities to adapt are surpassed
Journal Article > CommentaryFull Text
J Clim Chang Health. 9 September 2023; Online ahead of print; 100270.; DOI:10.1016/j.joclim.2023.100270
Schwerdtle PN, Devine C, Guevara M, Cornish S, Christou C, et al.
J Clim Chang Health. 9 September 2023; Online ahead of print; 100270.; DOI:10.1016/j.joclim.2023.100270
Journal Article > CommentaryFull Text
Lancet. 5 November 2022; Volume 400 (Issue 10363); 1561-1563.; DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01991-2
Baxter LM, McGowan CR, Smiley S, Palacios L, Devine C, et al.
Lancet. 5 November 2022; Volume 400 (Issue 10363); 1561-1563.; DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01991-2
The climate emergency is a humanitarian and health crisis. Extreme weather events, heat stress, declining air quality, changes in water quality and quantity, declining food security and safety, and changes in vector distribution and ecology threaten all of us. As the planet heats, climate risks are increasingly complex, frequent, and unpredictable, compounding existing vulnerabilities and inequities within populations and causing emergencies that cascade across different systems and sectors. Humanitarian agencies are now seeing how these problems are putting millions of people across the world at immediate risk of famine and death.
Technical Report > Policy Brief
Baxter LM, Cowan K, Devine C, Guevara M, Kalub D, et al.
27 October 2022
As an independent international medical humanitarian organisation responding to health crises in more than 70 countries, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is seeing first-hand the suffering caused or exacerbated by climate change and environmental degradation, most often experienced by the most vulnerable people. We are witnessing how climate change directly threatens health – for example, through death and injury due to extreme weather – and how climate change impacts health indirectly, through food insecurity and shifting patterns of climate-sensitive infectious diseases.
Recognising the role of the climate crisis in amplifying humanitarian needs, MSF is adapting its operations to be more responsive to the populations it serves while also facing up to the challenges of measuring and reducing its own environmental footprint.
Recognising the role of the climate crisis in amplifying humanitarian needs, MSF is adapting its operations to be more responsive to the populations it serves while also facing up to the challenges of measuring and reducing its own environmental footprint.
Journal Article > CommentaryFull Text
Global Health. 9 July 2020; Volume 16 (Issue 1); 54.; DOI:10.1186/s12992-020-00582-3
Schwerdtle PN, Irvine E, Brockington S, Devine C, Guevara M, et al.
Global Health. 9 July 2020; Volume 16 (Issue 1); 54.; DOI:10.1186/s12992-020-00582-3
Climate change is adversely affecting health by increasing human vulnerability and exposure to climate-related stresses. Climate change impacts human health both directly and indirectly, through extreme weather events, changing distribution of health risks, increased risks of undernutrition, population displacement, and greater risks of injuries, disease, and death (Ebi, K., Campbell-Lendrum, D., & Wyns, A. The 1. 5 health report. WHO. 2018). This risk amplification is likely to increase the need for humanitarian support. Recent projections indicate that under a business as usual scenario of sustained greenhouse gas emissions, climate change could double the demand for humanitarian assistance by 2050 (World Health Organization. Operational Framework for building climateresilient health systems. WHO. 2015). Humanitarian assistance is currently not meeting the existing needs, therefore, any additional burden is likely to be highly challenging.
Global health advocates, researchers, and policymakers are calling for urgent action on climate change, yet there is little clarity on what that action practically entails for humanitarian organizations. While some humanitarian organizations may consider themselves well designed to respond, climate change as a transversal threat requires the incorporation of a resilience approach to humanitarian action and policy responses.
By bringing together authors from two historically disparate fields - climate change and health, and humanitarian assistance – this paper aims to increase the capacity of humanitarian organizations to protect health in an unstable climate by presenting an adapted framework. We adapted the WHO operational framework for climate-resilient health systems for humanitarian organizations and present concrete case studies to demonstrate how the framework can be implemented. Rather than suggest a re-design of humanitarian operations we recommend the application of a climate-lens to humanitarian activities, or what is also referred to as mainstreaming climate and health concerns into policies and programs. The framework serves as a starting point to encourage further dialogue, and to strengthen collaboration within, between, and beyond humanitarian organizations.
Global health advocates, researchers, and policymakers are calling for urgent action on climate change, yet there is little clarity on what that action practically entails for humanitarian organizations. While some humanitarian organizations may consider themselves well designed to respond, climate change as a transversal threat requires the incorporation of a resilience approach to humanitarian action and policy responses.
By bringing together authors from two historically disparate fields - climate change and health, and humanitarian assistance – this paper aims to increase the capacity of humanitarian organizations to protect health in an unstable climate by presenting an adapted framework. We adapted the WHO operational framework for climate-resilient health systems for humanitarian organizations and present concrete case studies to demonstrate how the framework can be implemented. Rather than suggest a re-design of humanitarian operations we recommend the application of a climate-lens to humanitarian activities, or what is also referred to as mainstreaming climate and health concerns into policies and programs. The framework serves as a starting point to encourage further dialogue, and to strengthen collaboration within, between, and beyond humanitarian organizations.
Technical Report > Policy Brief
Smiley S, McIver L, Schwerdtle PN, Lugli M, Claire A, et al.
21 October 2021
This brief details MSF’s experiences providing humanitarian assistance in contexts heavily affected by climate change; adapting our operations to climate-related threats; and working to reduce our environmental impact. Much like the process of ‘greening’ this vast, global movement, this brief is incomplete, imperfect: it tells an infinitely complex story from a limited range of perspectives, and poses more questions than it answers as we grapple with emergent facts. Given the imminent existential threat presented by current levels of environmental degradation, these limitations can probably be forgiven. But as we witness the human toll and deep injustice of the climate crisis, silence is, once again, not an option.
Conference Material > Slide Presentation
Smiley S, Devine C
MSF Scientific Days International 2021: Innovation. 20 May 2021
Conference Material > Slide Presentation
Kiddell-Monroe R, Farber J, Devine C, Orbinski J
MSF Scientific Days International 2021: Innovation. 20 May 2021; DOI:10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00177-7