Food insecurity rises at a global level linked to extreme heatwaves, people’s ability to work decreases due to heat stress in Europe. The CMCC contribution to the latest reports of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change, edited by the outstanding journal on medical science.

Climate change is undermining every dimension of global health, increasing the fragility of the global systems that health depends on, and increasing the vulnerability of populations to the coexisting geopolitical, energy, and cost-of-living crisis.

As countries and health systems continue to grapple with the health, social and economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict in Ukraine, and a global energy and cost of living crisis, climate change continues to rise unabated. The dependence on fossil fuels is compounding the health impacts of these crises, according to the 2022 Report of The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: global health at the mercy of fossil fuels.

The seventh Lancet Countdown report, led by University College London, represents the work of 99 experts from 51 institutions, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the CMCC Foundation. It presents 43 indicators that include new and improved metrics that monitor the impact of extreme temperature on food insecurity, household air pollution, and the alignment of fossil fuel industry with a healthy future. The new report was published this week, at the same time as The Lancet Public Health journal published the regional report 2022 Europe Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: towards a climate resilient future.

CMCC researcher Dr. Shouro Dasgupta is among the authors of both reports.

In the 2022 Report of The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, together with Professor Elizabeth Robinson – Director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment – Dr. Dasgupta tracked the impact of heatwaves on access to food. Increasing temperatures and frequency of heatwaves droughts are affecting crop yields, disrupting supply chains, and the stability of supplies. Dasgupta and Robinson combined individual-level data from 103 countries on difficulties in accessing food experiences with high-resolution climatic data. The questions to assess the status of food insecurity focus on food-related behaviours and experiences associated with increasing difficulties in accessing food due to resource constraints. “A novel time-varying regression allows us to estimate whether the relationship between food insecurity and heatwaves is changing over time” explains Dr. Dasgupta. “Compared to 1981–2010 average, increased frequency of heatwave days resulted in an increase of 3.7 percentage points in moderate-severe food insecurity in 2020, approximately an additional 98 million people became food insecure. Exposure to high temperatures and extreme weather affects people’s ability to work, resulting in lower incomes and reduced purchasing power, undermining food access.”

The two scientists also worked together on the first edition of the Lancet Countdown in Europe, which exposes alarming increases in climate-related health hazards, vulnerabilities, exposures, and impacts across Europe. They demonstrated that in most of Europe heat stress due to climate change is reducing labour supply (number of working hours) in high-exposure sectors, with worrying implications for health, growth, and inequality.
“Heat stress can affect people’s ability to work, both through the direct impacts on workers’ health and by reducing working hours and productivity” comments Dasgupta. “Loss of labour output not only affects the economy and incomes, with additional health implications. We combine NUTS-2 labour supply (number of working hours) data for high-exposure sectors (agriculture, construction, mining) with ERA5 temperature and precipitation data. Labour supply in these highly-exposed sectors was 0.98% (16 hrs/worker) lower in 2016-2019 compared to 1965-1994 baseline due to warming. The reduction was 0.23% (4 hrs/worker) in 1995-2000. Labour protection regulations and appropriately designed early warning systems can reduce the negative health and labour impacts linked to heat stress.”

For more information

The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change

• The report: Romanello M at al., The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: health at the mercy of fossil fuels. The Lancet, ISSN: 0140-6736, 2022, published online Oct 25. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01540-9
• The Lancet Countdown website: www.lancetcountdown.org
• Key findings – visual summary

The 2022 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change

• The report: van Daalen KR, Romanello M, Rocklöv J, et al. The 2022 Europe report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: towards a climate resilient future. Lancet Public Health 2022; published online Oct 25. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(22)00197-9