by Lianna Cabigas
Our planet and our health are deeply interconnected, and this reality is evident now more than ever at the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and in the midst of the climate crisis.
In a learning session co-organized by the St. Luke’s Planetary and Global Health Program at CODE-NGO’s Social Development Week 2023, Inaugural Director Dr. Renzo Guinto discussed how the destabilization of the climate system has profound impacts on people’s health. Air pollution and extreme heat has brought about a range of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, while warming temperatures have increased the incidences of vector-borne diseases like dengue all year-round and in countries where they are not usually found. People’s nutritional status is also affected by the impacts of climate change on food productivity.
The nexus of climate change and mental health is also an emerging field of study. In 2021, a study showed that Filipino youth are the most climate anxious in the world. “You don’t need to experience disaster firsthand for your mental health to be affected by climate change,” Dr. Guinto said.
Health impacts are also unfairly distributed around the world, with countries emitting lesser greenhouse gasses being the most affected by climate change. “The perpetrators of the climate crisis and the victims of the climate crisis are not the same,” Dr. Guinto said. “And therefore, this is not just a public health issue. It is a climate and health justice issue.”
To withstand the impacts of climate change, Dr. Guinto emphasized the importance of climate-smart and climate-resilient health systems, which do not collapse in the face of climate shocks and that do no harm to the planet. He shared about the work of St. Luke’s with coastal communities in Iloilo and the Quezon province, where they piloted tools to improve local health systems. While health is used as an entry point into these communities, they shared about the active participation and important contribution of various stakeholders in creating health systems that are responsive to the needs of those on the ground.
Dr. Jake Cortez and Dr. Pauline Tiangco, Research Fellows at the St. Luke’s Planetary and Global Health Program, facilitated an engaging discussion with the participants after Dr. Guinto’s presentation. Mr. Xerxes Solon, CODE-NGO Trustee from the Eastern Visayas Network of NGOs (EVNET), shared about the role of indigenous knowledge systems in addressing the health and climate crisis, specifically about groups like the Rizalistas protecting Lake Danao in Leyte. The intersection of faith & spirituality, public health, and planetary health is a new field that St. Luke’s is exploring, said Dr. Guinto.
Participants agreed that stakeholder integration, participation, and collaboration are key ingredients to cross-sectoral solutions to public health and climate change. As planetary health is an emerging field, St. Luke’s hopes to have more discussions with different stakeholders to further its cause with CODE-NGO.
Watch the replay of the session here.
St. Luke’s Planetary and Global Health Program is the first entity dedicated to the new field of planetary health in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. To learn more about their work, visit https://slmc-cm.edu.ph/academics/global-health/
To know more about the CODE-NGO Social Development Week, visit https://code-ngo.org/socialdevelopmentweek
Bibliography
Hickman, Caroline, Elizabeth Marks, Panu Pihkala, Susan Clayton, R Eric Lewandowski, Elouise E Mayall, Britt Wray, Catriona Mellor, and Lise van Susteren. “Climate Anxiety in Children and Young People and Their Beliefs about Government Responses to Climate Change: A Global Survey.” The Lancet Planetary Health 5, no. 12 (December 2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/s2542-5196(21)00278-3.