Climate change and the drivers of seasonal nutritional status - food access, infectious disease and the care environment

Transcription

1 Climate change and the drivers of seasonal nutritional status - food access, infectious disease and the care environment SEASONAL HUNGER AND PUBLIC POLICY: INTERSECTORAL SOLUTIONS NEEDED 7 th CUGH Annual Conference 2016 Madeleine C Thomson International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University, New York. PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre on early warning systems for malaria and other climate sensitive diseases

2 Thanks to Lawrence Haddad, Jess Fanzo, Israel Ukawuba and Aisha Muhammad

3 Not enough countries include climate or climate change in their national nutrition plans GNR 2015 Countries in orange do not include climate or climate change in their nutrition plans

4 Climate and Nutrition: Conceptual Links GNR 2015

5 Food environment

6 Work/social environment

7 Health access impacted by seasonally impassable roads Blanford et al. International Journal of Health Geographics 2012, 11:24 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

8 Living environment

9 Climate varies on multiple time scales Day and night rotation of the Earth every 24 hours Seasonal cycle movement of the Earth around the sun Year to year variability - Short term cyclical changes in sea surface temperature Decadal variability long term cyclical changes in sea surface temperature Climate change anthropogenic forcing

10 Understanding the seasons essential to the science of medicine Hippocrates Father of Medicine Born in 460 B.C. - Died in 377 B.C. Airs, Waters Places".

11 Why rainfall seasonality is important for health and well being Seasonality affects every aspect of life in rural areas from food security, infectious disease, access to health facilities, disposable income, births, deaths, marriages etc. According to Robert Chambers seasonal hunger is the father of famine and that any development professional serious about poverty has to be serious about seasonality. Popular in development studies in the 1970s, and 1980 s Seasonality is back. Seasonal hunger may be the primary indicator of population vulnerability to climate change

12 African seasonality Sub-Saharan Africa generally has more extreme seasonality, than in Asia in comparable semi-arid tropical zones less irrigation in SSA, soil characteristics - porous sandy soils retain less moisture.

13 Malaria control and elimination and economic development in conflict in East Shoa Woreda and sub-woreda analysis

14 The Seasonal Climate of Eastern Africa The Climate of Eastern Africa: The East Africa has one of the most complex climates in Africa. The large-scale tropical drivers, which include major convergence zones, are superimposed on other factors including the region s complex topography, large lakes and extensive coastline. Across much of Eastern Africa, the annual cycle of rainfall tends to be bi-modal, with rainy seasons in Oct-Dec (the short rains) and Mar-May (the long rains). As a result, the climatic patterns are markedly complex and can change rapidly over short distances. For example i) the average amount of rainfall often changes significantly within distances on the order of 10s of kilometers ii) within the region there are areas with one, two and even three seasonal cycles of rainfall and iii) the transition from desert, with rainfall less than 200mm, to rainforest where the annual rainfall is >2000mm happens within short horizontal distances or changes in elevation.

15 How is climate measured?

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17 ENACTS Advantage ARC RFE ENACTS Monitoring ENACTS Climate Analysis

18 Enhanced National Climate Services (ENACTS) Ethiopia New products combine locally calibrated satellite rainfall and temperature estimates and all available quality controlled groundbased meteorological station gauge data. 30 years every 10 days every 10km

19 By choosing the rainfall variable and the a grid point (woreda, zone or region), a new graph can be generated.

20 The impact of spatial scale in determining the characteristics of the climatology can be readily observed by comparing results from different spatial scales. In Ethiopia climatologies aggregated at large spatial scales may include areas with different climate characteristics. Observations for Zone West Wellega, Oromia, Ethiopia Observations for Oromia region, Ethiopia Observations forzone East Harerghe, Oromia, Ethiopia

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23 DHS surveys Fig. 1. Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) timeline: key survey question, module and biomarker milestones, A systematic review of Demographic and Health Surveys: data availability and utilization for research. Madeleine Short Fabic a, YoonJoung Choi a & Sandra Bird a Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2012;90: doi: /BLT

24 DHS DHS, is carried out every few years at various times during the year (often the dry season) Malaria Indicator Survey (MIS) is usually timed to correspond with the high malaria transmission season. DHS training only refers to seasonality in the context of malaria

25 Conclusion Seasonality matters once we have grasped this then we can look at how seasons might vary from on year to another and how they might shift over time. If we can better map seasonal patterns we can intervene in more subtle, seasonally appropriate ways We can use climate information as a resource to better understand local seasonal variations, year to year variability and trends

26 Thank you