Teaching climate change and health: the contribution of development studies and sustainable development

This paper focuses on development, sustainable development and the relationship between them with respect to climate change and health. The paper presents three cases created to bring together both development and sustainable development perspective. <br /><br />The paper underlines that there are a number of relevant international agreements and conventions for addressing the problems in the mentioned field. Nevertheless, this may dilute an approach to the overarching problem, allowing countries to remain complacent to the issue. <br /><br />The paper indicates the persistent health inequalities across the board related to differences in income. Yet, it deems that political interventions have the potential to flatten out the differences between disparate groups. Otherwise, health effects of climate changes will disproportionately affect the poor, both within and among countries.<br /><br />In this context, the paper points to a consideration that has arisen with sustainable development. This is a view that those who have caused a degraded environment have responsibility for not only mitigating the problem, but also for the people they have affected both in other places and in other times.<br /><br />The paper concludes that sustainable development has not satisfactorily encompassed climate changes, asking some relevant questions, such as:<br /> how do we avert the climate from tipping while at the same time securing local access to adequate and safe resources? how do we address the continued development, including the improved health of poor countries, given the constrains of climate changes? how do we ensure changes in behaviour of wealthy countries with respect to energy use and waste disposal?The paper states that addressing these issues entails a broad approach that focuses both on health as an ends and a means. Moreover, given the importance of environment, social and political context to health, this means addressing both climate and development.