Victoria Wee

May 2015

The acceleration of human-induced climate change has triggered unprecedented risks associated with the spread of infectious diseases. The planet has been transformed into a ground-zero testing ground for the consequences that Earth’s changing climate wreaks on global health security. This paper aims to dig into the relationship between anthropogenic climate change and infectious disease, to study the various human-health threats of climate variability, to understand broader implications through examining historical records of sea level, and to identify related gaps in international climate policy.

A key aspect of the relationship between global climate change and health security is in the consequences that the physical condition and geomorphology of the Earth has on the way in which humans live and interact. This paper will first examine the condition of Earth’s climate variability to ground our subsequent investigations in the trends behind changing climate metrics. This paper will then take a step backward and look to the past to draw learnings from a time period in Earth’s history with similar carbon dioxide concentrations as today. We will use this study as a way think about the potential extent of risks to global health caused by extreme planet conditions and to reach a sense of urgency for anticipating and adapting to climate conditions. 

With this attitude in mind, we will go on to look at the state of international policy around climate change and global health security. We will examine the meeting agendas and negotiation outcomes of the highest level of international conversations around climate change. From this information, we can then evaluate the level of urgency and action that nation states are taking with respect to global health in the face of the rapidly changing planet. In particular, we will focus on the most recent key outcome document of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the foremost international organizing body setting the pace of climate-related negotiations between nation states. From a focused examination of the UNFCCC negotiation outcomes, we can identify gaps and challenges in the international climate community’s efforts to address biosecurity issues. The conclusions of this paper will join the body of research behind health vulnerabilities to extreme climate. In particular this paper is written in the hope that its findings may be applied in a constructive spirit, lending weight to organizations or individuals urging governments to make meaningful and binding commitments to carbon-reduction, and to refocus negotiations to include conversations around the health effects of climate change.