Climate adaptation and sustainable rural health outcomes in Southern Africa

Abstract

Climate change is now a reality. Now also called the climate crisis, it is impacting heavily on people's physical and mental wellbeing across the globe. Climate change takes an incalculable toll on human health and wellbeing, in terms of disease, injury, and death as well as homelessness, hunger, and emotional trauma. The climate crisis is, therefore, a health crisis. With the focus now mostly on responses to the effects of climate change, various studies have assessed different aspects of climate mitigation and adaptation actions. Explicit focus on understanding the health impacts of adaptation actions in different countries and communities has, however, not been appreciated . Yet the health impacts of adaptation actions are directly linked to livelihood resilience, sustained household and community adaptive capacity as well as the physical, social and economic wellbeing of a society. In addition, although adaptation policy instruments in most countries acknowledge the need for strengthening the surveillance of human health under climatic variability and change, many do not proffer strategies for doing that nor do they address the "how" of tracking and evaluating direct health impacts of adaptation actions in different contexts.