Climate Change in India's Policies
Status: Ongoing
Topic Tags: Environmental health, climate change, health impact of climate change, India, policy analysis, health national adaptation plans
SDG Tags: Good Health and Well-being; Climate Action
Scope: India
Sponsors: None
ASAR Members involved: Aatmika Nair, Anjaly Ashok, Anwesha Maharana, Avanti Andhale, Divya Shrinivas, Pubali Biswas, Shreyas Patil, Siddhesh Zadey, Sweta Dubey
Collaborators: Centre for Environmental Health (CEH)
Summary
The anthropogenic climate change of this century has direct and indirect impacts on human health. The direct impacts include natural parameters like heat, flood, air pollution, etc, and the indirect impacts include diseases arising from those natural disasters, like water-borne, air-borne, vector-borne diseases, malnutrition, mental health illness, etc. If this narrative is established, people can be made aware of the effects and consequences of climate change. Therefore, we propose that health can be used as a central point to push for awareness and policy-making for climate change. In addition, there needs to be better awareness amongst the doctors and medical staff regarding the adverse effects of climate change on health so that they can adapt the treatments accordingly and reach out to those who are sceptical.
Methodology
1.1.
-
Compilation of quality criteria to assess the climate change and human health policy documents in India
-
Creation of a scoring system to quantitatively gauge the performance of the drafted policy documents for proposed action plans
-
Based on the status of the action plans, suggest improvements to make the plans implementation-ready.
1.2
-
Perform surveys in different medical colleges around the country
-
Analyse the survey results using statistical measures.
-
Provide suggestions and recommendations to the curriculum committee to consider the climate change-related diseases and the gravity of the situation.
Research Aims
-
To assess the preparedness and resilience of the Indian public health systems to climate change.
-
To gauge the perception of Indian doctors and medical staff towards climate change and human health, so that the education curriculum of the medical students can be revived to deal with new challenges.