Climate change, biodiversity and human health

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. It is now widely recognized that climate change and biodiversity loss¹ are interconnected, and that both are increasingly influenced by human activity (IPCC 2014; Pereira et al. 2010; Campbell et al. 2009; Bellard et al. 2012; Parmesan et al. 2011; Rockström et al. 2009; Beaumont et al. 2011; CBD 2009, 2003). The recently released Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supports previous findings that climatic change will probably be perilously aggravated unless robust climate adaptation and mitigation measures are adopted.² Total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions³ resulting from anthropogenic activity have risen more rapidly between 2000 to 2010 than in any other period in human history (IPCC 2014b),⁴ and the
potential impacts of anthropogenic activity on biodiversity under business-as-usual scenarios are but another reminder of the critical need for action (CBD 2010; 2014). The impacts of climate change will be amplified as it interacts with a range of other drivers; a warming climate not only threatens the stability and functioning of our planet’s biological and physical systems but also poses direct and indirect threats to global public, health, with more pronounced impacts on the world’s most vulnerable populations (McMichael et al. 2006, 2012; Parmesan and Martens 2009; Haines et al. 2006).