Valuation and perception of the costs of climate change on health

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Climate change affects our societies and lives through our economies, our livelihoods, and our health. Economic losses of climate change are estimated at $23 trillion, largely through externalities due to premature mortality, healthcare expenditure, and health-related work losses. Even if there are established methods to quantify the health economic burden, there is limited information on how people perceive this information. The current study aimed to examine different health cost evaluation methods and observe perceptions of stakeholders in the climate change context.

METHOD

The participatory research approach of the World Café with 41 participants was applied to explore four topics associated with valuing the costs of climate change. The data were analyzed following an inductive approach.

RESULTS

Despite the willingness-to-pay approach being widely applied, many experts see actual healthcare costs as a more explicit indicator of costs; however, this approach might underestimate actual costs. Participants experienced difficulties accepting and understanding cost estimates that indicated very high externalities as a percentage of gross domestic product. The cost-effectiveness of mitigation and adaptation measures was also challenged by a concern that while the costs of such measures are incurred now, the benefits do not come to fruition until later, for example, when building bike lanes or dams.

CONCLUSIONS

Policies should favor environmentally friendly activities such as making cycling more convenient in cities with the health benefits presented in monetary terms, while limiting car driving. Moreover, the public might better understand the costs of climate change via tools that map how solutions influence different sectors and outlining the costs in evaluating the benefits for health and the environment.

Environmental literacy affects riparian clean production near major waterways and tributaries

Although environmental illiteracy threatens the functioning of landscapes throughout the world, it is frequently ignored. The traditional wisdom assumes that suspicions will evaporate when the public and government authorities are provided with new information. Despite significant efforts to enhance riparian corridor output, limited data are available on the effect of environmental literacy metrics (ELMs) on clean production elements (CPEs) across various streams (e.g., main rivers and tributaries) within impoundments. This study examined such effects within the China Three Gorges Dam Reservoir area (TGDRA) by collecting 336 transects that assessed the breadth of effects on 58,000 km² in 2019. The network visualization revealed 7234 papers published over the last 121 years, each of which focused on themes such as plant cover, regeneration, exotics, erosion, habitat, and stressors. The bar graph showed that the general public lacked understanding of environmental literacy (e.g., knowledge, attitudes, and behavior), which influenced plant cover elements most in tributary zones but had little direct effect on regeneration. Locals' environmental literacy had the greatest impact on CPEs, with Pearson correlation coefficients ranging from -0.69 <r < 0.96 in the main river zones. Moreover, public employees' environmental literacy had a stronger correlation with CPEs (-0.58 <r < 0.83) within the main river regions. Farming systems, exposed soil, dominant grass regeneration, and instream structures, including pollution, were among the most notable CPEs within the TGDRA. According to hierarchical approaches, CPEs and ELMs change substantially across stream types. CPEs and ELMs vary significantly around main rivers and tributaries, requiring efforts to raise the public understanding of the worldwide impacts of stream health on humans.