We are not all equal when it comes to climate change. The impacts are and will be disproportionately felt by poorer countries, poorer people, youth and marginalized groups such as those who are homeless, have chronic illnesses and Indigenous and Black populations. Focusing our climate change response efforts on these groups offers the best route to decreasing the impacts of climate change for us all.
Climate change exponentially amplifies the health risks faced by populations whose health, well-being and human rights are already compromised. We heard the same about COVID-19. For example, during the height of the pandemic, public health officials developed initiatives that focused on the needs of one equity-deserving population but improved the pandemic response for everyone. Toronto’s equity-driven pandemic response decreased the rates of infections in the Black population from nine times that of the white population to two times. This not only decreased the overall rate of infection and hospitalization in Toronto, taking pressure off emergency departments, but also ensured a population that disproportionately works in healthcare and as essential workers were able to support the pandemic effort. Toronto’s pandemic response was the envy of many high-income countries and was a strategy built on equity.
In our climate change response, we have a chance to work from the understanding that the health of everyone, including those who live with poverty and discrimination, is essential to the health of our society.
The extreme nature of the problems we will face because of climate change also offer us an opportunity to think past Band-Aid solutions. We can create initiatives which reflect the continuing adaptations we will need to make to mitigate climate catastrophe.
For example, we need more accessible cooling spaces for isolated older adults who face dire risks in sub-standard housing. An initiative could have supportive and connected communities with enforced housing standards that protect health far beyond the threat of a changing environment.
We need more shade and access to water in downtown spaces where people lacking housing and struggling with mental illness suffer and die from heat stroke and burns. A solution could be to have accessible, supportive housing with mental healthcare that can largely eliminate homelessness.
We need a better public health response to address the disproportionate number of Black pregnant women exposed to excessive heat and air pollution, which poses a risk of pre-term birth and complications with fetal brain development. An equity-driven initiative could tackle the structural discrimination that relegates generations of Black populations to neighbourhoods exposed to environmental risks and ensures access to the resources mothers and children need to have a good quality of life.
We will be misguided, however, if all our attention is on adaptation. As Desmond Tutu noted in the context of climate change: “Adaptation is becoming a euphemism for social injustice on a global scale.” We will be profoundly disadvantaged if we do not make structural changes to how we extract, use and dispose of resources.
Working with populations most impacted by climate change will allow us to produce solutions that will be effective and acceptable. Co-designed adaptation and mitigation responses will be the most efficient and impactful.
And we need to start with the marginalized groups who will inherit this planet from us.
Most young people perceive climate change as an existential threat and a source of anxiety, hopelessness and frustration with what they see as a sluggish response by decision-makers. Their distress suggests they are more in touch with the future we are facing than much of society. We believe this distress can readily be transformed into the resolve needed for fundamental change.
Young people are calling on us to form a plan, make hard but effective choices grounded in evidence, and move quickly. Let’s answer them.
It’s in the best interests of us all.