Climate and Health

Climate and Health

From dangerous weather events, food and water insecurity, poor air quality, changes to infectious disease, effects on our mental health and more, climate change is impacting the health of millions of people around the world, particularly in low and middle income countries. Monash experts are helping the world understand the links between the climate crisis and public and planetary health.

Maghfira sampling wetlands

The climate crisis is a also a health crisis

Climate change affects millions of people around the world, bringing death, injuries and mental health consequences, as well as the loss of homes and livelihoods, and impacting health services and critical infrastructure such as power, transport and communications.

The ways climate change threatens people’s health can be broadly categorised as direct (the immediate impacts of a hazard) or indirect (mediated through a hazard’s impacts on the natural and human systems, on which our health depends).

Read what Monash experts say about climate and health

 

Our focus on Climate and Health

Rising temperatures are impacting the planet and human health.
Read Monash Lens to learn how our researchers are rising to this real and urgent challenge.

ADL impact of climate on human health

The impact of climate change on human health

Whether it’s impacts from deteriorating air quality, the spread of disease from rising temperatures and humidity, down to the psychological impacts of losing homes and forced migration, climate change is proving to be not just an environmental crisis, but a human health problem, too.

Read more

COP28: The climate crisis is a health crisis

Women bear the brunt of Asia’s climate failures

COP28: Why going beyond net zero is necessary to protect public health

COP26: Why education for girls is crucial in the fight against climate change

Re-imagining our future with cli-fi

Why Are We So Anxious About Earth?

How Can We Conquer Climate Anxiety?

Can Art Help Our Climate Anxiety?

Hitting the right notes on climate change

Four ways we can change our behaviour to adapt to the climate crisis

Climate change is supercharging 'Milton' type hurricanes


Associate Professor Angie Bone

The climate crisis is a health crisis - climate change is already affecting the physical and mental health of millions across the world, through extreme weather events, loss of lives and livelihoods, deteriorating air, soil and water quality, and the disruption of services on which our health depends. Safeguarding people's physical and mental health should be front and centre of national responses to climate change."

- Professor Angie Bone, Professor of Practice in Planetary Health, Monash Sustainable Development Institute