Global health. The current scenario and future perspectives

118 7. Climate Change and Health Ignacio Silva Santa Cruz, Yasna K. Palmeiro-Silva Introduction In recent years, multiple extreme weather and climate events caused by climate change have been observed around the world. Heavy rains in Europe have led to unprecedented flooding in Germany and Belgium, where authorities declared it “the greatest disaster since World War II” due to the impacts on infrastructure, missing persons and fatalities (BBC, 2021b). Torrential rains in China have caused devastating floods and the relocation of thousands of people from disaster areas to safer zones (BBC, 2021a). Additionally, the West Coast of Canada and the United States experienced one of the worst heatwaves in history, with temperatures reaching nearly 50°C in June (BBC, 2021c), similar to what happened in Africa, Asia and Europe in July 2022 (NASA, 2022). In Turkey and Greece, hundreds of wildfires have been recorded, which has to the evacuation of thousands of people and devastating consequences for biodiversity (The Guardian, 2021). All these events and many others, have impacted the well-being and health of millions of people and caused hundreds of deaths. This highlights the close relationship between climate change and the well-being and health of the population. The above events have not occurred by chance but rather because the climate system has been changing over time. According to scientific evidence and the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is highly likely that this climate change is attributable to human activities and the use of fossil fuels in energy generation, farming practices, deforestation, transportation systems and industrial processes (IPCC, 2022). Currently, humanity is at a critical point regarding climate action. Scientific evidence shows that, given the levels of greenhouse gas emissions, atmospheric temperatures will continue to rise and extreme weather events will continue to occur in all regions of the world. However, these effects could be mitigated if countries rapidly and urgently reduced greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2022). This would not only benefit the climate system but also the economy and society and have positive impacts on the well-being and health of people. To understand the relationship between climate change and population health, this document first provides a brief introduction to the