Climate Change Impact on Human Health in Himalayan Region (Internship)

Climate change and variability affect virtually everyone and every region of the world but the effects are nowhere more prominent than in mountain regions and people living therein. The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region is a vast expanse encompassing 18% of the world’s mountainous area. Sprawling over 4.3 million km2, the HKH region occupies areas of eight countries namely Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar, and Pakistan. The HKH region is warming at a rate higher than the global average and precipitation has also increased significantly over the last 6 decades along with increased frequency and intensity of some extreme events. Changes in temperature and precipitation have affected and will like to affect the climate-dependent sectors such as hydrology, agriculture, biodiversity, and human health. This paper aims to document how climate change has impacted and will impact, health and well-being of the people in the HKH region and offers adaptation and mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of climate change on health and well-being of the people. In the HKH region, climate change boosts infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), malnutrition, and injuries. Hence, climate change adaptation and mitigation measures are needed urgently to safeguard vulnerable populations residing in the HKH region.

Introduction

The consequential social and environmental changes due to globalization, interconnectedness, travel, trade, and an emphasis on economic and political supremacy are unprecedented. Disruption in the natural biogeochemical cycles as a result of anthropogenic climate change is now gradually approaching the safety limit for all life forms on Earth (McMichael, 2013). Given the alteration in the Planet’s life-sustaining systems, climate change has been identified as the greatest global health threat of the 21st century (Watts et al., 2018). Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region (Figure 1), the largest mountain system on earth and the origin of 10 major river basins that support almost 2 billion people, is one of the world’s most vulnerable ecosystems and is highly susceptible to the impact of climate change (Shrestha et al., 2012; Pandit et al., 2014; Wester et al., 2019). The rate of warming in this region (0.06°C per year, estimated using the baseline data spanning 25 years prior to the year 2006) has been reported to be greater than the global average warming rate (Shrestha et al., 2012).