Health and Climate change: How to better understand and anticipate growing risks 

January 24, 2025 · News

In brief :

  • Wavestone and the Veolia Institute published a joint report to address the intersection of health and the environment.
  • This groundbreaking publication features insights, analyses, and solutions from 25+ researchers, experts, and professionals, offering diverse perspectives on the challenges and opportunities in this crucial field.
  • A follow-up conference is scheduled for January 29 to present the report and foster debate. With the environment shaping our health—through heatwaves, pollution, and emerging diseases—guests will discuss how we can better understand and anticipate these growing risks to protect our collective well-being.

Takeaways for business and public organization leaders

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic reminded us of the vulnerability of human health. In revealing our interdependencies and highlighting how every aspect of our existence is linked to others, the pandemic gave a renewed perspective on the history of a civilization whose development has always been marked by public health calamities. It took this crisis for health to once again become a shared concern at a global scale.

 

Climate emergencies represent a direct threat to human health

  • The environment’s omnipresence renders it a fundamental determinant of human health. Its constant presence throughout our lives means that environmental factors, such as climate change, can have profound and pervasive effects on wellbeing.
  • Health status and lifespan are influenced by geography due to interactions between geographic and social factors, including economics, history, culture, development and migration. Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier” exacerbating vulnerabilities.
  • Climate change and pollution are damaging to ecosystems, with knock-on effects on working conditions and economic performance. Climate change and its impact on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) have put us in the same situation, where a new phenomenon has to be incorporated into prevention policies for businesses and professional sectors. With the emergence of new risks for workers and the creation of standards designed to protect them, the workplace is becoming a focal point for extending social protection.
  • The last years have given us a foretaste of how extreme heatwaves take their toll on human life. Amidst these challenges, it is crucial to recognize the remarkable adaptability of the human body. A key takeaway is the importance of listening to the body’s physiological signals. Scientists and policymakers are actively engaged in raising public awareness, devising prevention plans, and implementing educational initiatives. Thoughtful urban design can also play a key role.

Natural ecosystems altered and damaged by climate change also represent a threat to human health

  • Humans, ecosystems and animals all share “one health”. At a time when nearly a quarter of deaths and illnesses worldwide are a consequence of poor environmental conditions, it is clearly vital to acknowledge that human health can only flourish if the other two pillars are preserved. We need to protect them so we can safeguard our life on earth.
  • Food is central to the climate agenda and moving towards more sustainable food systems that produce healthy diets is a pathway to climate adaptation. Food systems’ action and investment must be scaled rapidly with a fair share of trade-offs requiring that high-quality data and science to be translated into policy faster than ever before.
  • Water is vital to human health. It also conditions the production of electricity, agriculture, housing, and sometimes even employment. Extreme weather events are causing widespread disruption to water resources. Extended droughts, dry waterways, and devastating flooding not only have an impact on drinking water supplies but also on many sectors that use and/or consume water. It is through individual water-saving measures and collective resilience efforts at the river basin level – such as the creation of new infrastructure, the use of shared forecasting data, the renegotiation of cross-border cooperation agreements, and the strengthening of regional dialogue bodies that we will mitigate the consequences of extreme climate events on water-consuming human activities.

The necessary adaptation of societies and organizations

  • Organizational resilience defined as “the capacity of a certain organization to maintain a state of dynamic stability, which allows it to continue its operations during and after a major incident or in the presence of a major stress is now part of the agenda at all levels. To develop this capacity, societies and organizations have to tackle four types of challenges: cognitive, by accepting change; strategic, by imagining new options; political, by channeling resources to tomorrow’s activities, and ideological, by promoting a proactive search for opportunities.
  • In the health sector itself, the level of action being taken by health industry professionals is unprecedented. In addition to their commitments to reducing their own emissions, they are actively engaging with stakeholders in health systems to educate, raise awareness and promote the sharing of best practices, data and even technical skills by issuing recommendations and assessment guidelines.
  • Understanding the relationship between climate, buildings, and occupants is crucial for protecting and promoting the health and wellbeing of urban dwellers over time, as climate change projections evolve. City planning has a key role in creating healthy and climate resilient urban environments. To protect health, city planners and leaders need to ensure urban areas can withstand and quickly recover from inevitable disruption.
  • Insurers face growing challenges in understanding and covering all the risks associated with climate change and their impact on health. The many risks that have appeared recently are interconnected and combine with existing threats, making them particularly complex to manage. It is in this context insures are striving to find innovative solutions to offer protection to as many people as possible, thereby increasing society’s overall resilience. Prevention should become an essential adjunct to insurance, making it even more important to implement joint public and private mechanisms to meet the needs of society as a whole.
  • Enhancing agricultural practices through advanced data analytics and predictive modelling is pivotal in promoting sustainability and resilience in agriculture. AI-driven climate models can forecast extreme weather events, allowing for early warnings that help communities prepare and respond effectively.

Learn from 25+ contributions of scientists, researchers and pubic & private organizations:

A conference gathering Insurance & Health sectors leaders and academics

Veolia Institute is organizing a conference on January 29 2025, bringing together business leaders and academic researchers. Cédric Baecher, a partner at Wavestone, will moderate the event, which will present key insights from the FACT report:

The Environment determines our health: heatwaves, pollution and emerging diseases… How can we better understand and anticipate these growing risks to protect our collective wellbeing?

Guest speakers will include prominent figures from various sectors (insurance, life sciences, academics), offering diverse perspectives on the intersection of environmental factors and public health.

  • Julia d’Astorg, Director of the AXA Research Fund
  • Sandrine Bouttier Stref, CSR Director at Sanofi
  • Philippe Seberac, Director of technological and scientific expertise at Veolia

Register: https://lnkd.in/eevhsuPx

 

About Veolia Institute

A platform for discussion and collective thinking, the Veolia Institute has been exploring the future at the crossroads between society and the environment since it was set up in 2001. The Veolia Institute has official NGO observer status under the terms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Veolia Institute draws on the expertise and international reputation of the members of the Foresight Committee and guides its work and steers its development.