gms | German Medical Science

Background: Climate change is increasingly impacting all sectors of society and is already intensively discussed in the context of environmental, political, health, and social issues. Climate adaptation and its strategies have been in public discussion for several decades. Yet, there is no single definition for climate adaptation. The purpose of climate adaptation is to mitigate unavoidable and already occurring direct and indirect consequences of climate change, to avoid further damage, and to strengthen defences and resilience.

The most used definition comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It defines adaptation to climate change as “initiatives and measures to reduce the sensitivity of natural and human systems to actual or expected impacts of climate change” [IPCC 2007, 86]. Adaptation to climate change also requires dealing with different climate change-related health challenges. This means that climate adaptation is closely related to the protection of human health and, among other things, to ensuring universally accessible and high-quality health care. The strategies and actions identified in the context of climate change adaptation and health are aimed at adapting behaviour, changing conditions and adapting structures. These changes, in turn, can have an impact on a person's health and well-being.

It’s not uncommon to hear the demand that climate adaptation measures must be designed in a cross-sectoral and multidimensional way and implemented in different living environments and organizational units. There are also parallels with the setting approach known in public health or the HIAP (Health in all policies) strategy. In the discipline of spatial planning, we discuss, for example, structural measures such as the unsealing of surfaces, the preservation and promotion of fresh and cold air paths, the greening of the city or climate-adapted building structures. From a public health perspective, instruments such as heat action plans are discussed, which address both conditions and people’s behaviour. Other questions deal with challenges of climate stress and health care facilities, two topics that have been discussed in the session “Climate adaptation” at the transdisciplinary international forum on urban health.

Contributions: The contributions of the session consisted of the following presentations:

1.

Dr.in Wiriya Puntub; Institute of spatial planning; Technical University Dortmund: Future-oriented planning for climate resilient urban health care services.

2.

Dr. Thomas Claßen, Dr.in Odile C. L. Mekel, Dr. Raphael Sieber; Abteilung Gesunde Settings, Landeszentrum für Gesundheit NRW (LZG.NRW), Bochum, Deutschland: The status quo of heat health action planning.

Plenary discussion results: Before the first post, the audience was given to post something about their interest in this topic. On a second poster, the audience positioned themselves to share a prefabricated thesis:

“Dealing with urban heat in combination with other stress factors (air pollution, noise, lack of green spaces e.g.) is a central task in the Ruhr area”.

In the first discussion, it became clear, that there was a broadly distributed spectrum of interests in the topic of the session. Views on this thesis were closely divided.

The presentations were followed by a plenary discussion between the presenters and the audience along with the following guiding questions:

• What do we already know in the context of climate adaptation and health, but what do we not know? and
• Where are innovative approaches to action that we can use for and in the Ruhr region?

Conclusion and outlook: The presentations and the constructive and inspiring discussion at the end show that there is already a lot of knowledge about climate adaptation in the context of urban health, both internationally and in the Ruhr Area.

It seemed important to the discussants to translate knowledge into action. Instruments such as the heat action plan are very valuable for this purpose. The sensitivity to the topic is there. There is a lack of measures at the implementation level.

Figure 1 [Fig. 1]