According to NOAA’s 2021 Annual Climate Report the overall land and ocean temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit (0.08 degrees Celsius) per decade since 1880; however, the average rate of increase since 1981 (0.18°C / 0.32°F) has been more than twice that rate.
This climate change is due to the overall warming of Earth dependent on how much CO2 and other greenhouse gases we emit the coming decades. Presently, human activities like burning fossil fuels and deforestation adds about 11 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year. The natural processes are unable to remove this huge amount of carbon, and therefore carbon dioxide emissions increase every year.
From the mid-1990s, the climate community as a whole figured that we can only afford to reach a temperature increase of only 2 degrees Celsius without incurring any disastrous climate change. Anything above this point will have severe consequences on our climate.
Climate change will influence the availability and the quality of water, and global health hazards from a shortage of this essential resource will be severe unless water-scarce nations can adapt. Water scarcity is undoubtedly the most challenging and significant issue, as it is interrelated to both our energy and food sources. Sea level rise due to rapid melting of polar ice also presents a security risk—not just to our coastlines, cities, but also as a driver of mass migration. The rapid melting of polar ice also poses a threat not only to our coastlines and cities, but can also potentially lead to mass migration. Even under the most optimistic mitigation scenario, a 1.5-foot rise in sea levels would affect 72 million people over the next century. This will result in a massive surge of homeless climate refugees.
Even with robust, coordinated global effort to combat climate crisis, we are unquestionably entering a period of geopolitical, sociological, economic turmoil and war. Recent years have seen an increase in concern over whether rising demand for natural resources such as food, water, land, and oil will increasingly begin to hit limits to supply growth, and thus trigger intensifying zero-sum competition or increased violent conflict over scarce resources – particularly, but not exclusively, because of the projected impacts of climate change.
Climate change-induced resource shortages will aggravate problems like poverty, environmental degradation, socio-political turbulence, and social unrest that might facilitate terrorist activity and other types of violence.
To summarise, even before considering climate change, shortage of land, food, water, and energy is projected to be a growing engine of change from now through to 2030, and beyond. Climate change will exacerbate the challenge in all of these areas, and the combined effect of these changes is likely to put tens to hundreds of millions more people at risk of impacts including hunger, disease, displacement, injury, poverty, or other forms of hardship.
To ensure worldwide water security and protect human health, global, diversified cooperation and partnership will be required, particularly between developed and low-income nations that lack the resources to adapt on their own.
A wide spectrum of work on this front is already beginning in poor countries and among global contributors. Environmental management, disaster prevention, social welfare, and other risk-focused components of the wide development agenda, for example, have received significantly increasing attention in recent years. The effect that these measures could have on the scale of the challenge is significant: the most recent science findings available for the effects of climate change on hunger, for example, show that while the increase in the risk of hunger as a result of climate change could be between 10% and 60%, effective adaptation policies could reduce the number to 5%.
There are several career paths accessible to health care professionals involved in moving into public health research, particularly for individuals who have acquired an advanced education, such as a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree. Completing an MPH course can help potential public health research specialists understand the field and develop the information, aids, and capabilities that can lay the foundation for success. We at Athar Institute of Health and Management Studies (AIHMS) provide MPH degree at an affordable fee providing students with the best opportunities to combine their studies with practical experience.
