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).

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.

Nepal floods

Nepal’s floods reveal a growing climate threat

Nepal’s devastating floods reveal the growing risks facing communities as mountain regions heat up. Monash experts examine how climate change is increasing the threat of landslides, floods and other cascading disasters – and why understanding these risks is critical to building resilience in vulnerable regions.

Learn 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

Tsunami of dirt: what caused Nepal’s deadly glacial flood?

Europe is battling a record‑breaking heatwave. What’s making it so severe

Why Australia should put health at the heart of COP31


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