Human Health and Climate Change: Leverage Points for Adaptation in Urban Environments

Abstract

The design of adaptation strategies that promote urban health and well-being in the face of climate change requires an understanding of the feedback interactions that take place between the dynamical state of a city, the health of its people, and the state of the planet. Complexity, contingency and uncertainty combine to impede the growth of such systemic understandings. In this paper we suggest that the collaborative development of conceptual models can help a group to identify potential leverage points for effective adaptation. We describe a three-step procedure that leads from the development of a high-level system template, through the selection of a problem space that contains one or more of the group’s adaptive challenges, to a specific conceptual model of a sub-system of importance to the group. This procedure is illustrated by a case study of urban dwellers’ maladaptive dependence on private motor vehicles. We conclude that a system dynamics approach, revolving around the collaborative construction of a set of conceptual models, can help communities to improve their adaptive capacity, and so better meet the challenge of maintaining, and even improving, urban health in the face of climate change.

Complexity and Dynamism from an Urban Health Perspective: a Rationale for a System Dynamics Approach

“…23 Many of the studies that have applied system dynamics approaches to urban health issues have often focused on urban infrastructure management such as transport, [24][25][26] water, [27][28][29][30] and waste management systems. [31][32][33][34][35] A handful of studies have explicitly focused on population health outcomes in urban settings, including oral health, 36 HIV/ sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention, 37 social determinants of health, 38 climate change, 39 and youth violence. 40 More recently, a complex systems lens was used to develop and analyze a qualitative study of a multisectoral, multiagency alliance in Adelaide, Australia, aimed at improving outcomes for disadvantaged people through the social determinants of health.…”

Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health

“…219 Besides air quality, several links between climate mitigation practices and technologies and potential health benefits have been established ( figure 11). 220,221 Using active transport as an example, the shift from car driving to walking and cycling not only reduces the air pollutant emissions, but also increases levels of exercise, which in turn can lead to reduced risks of severa l health outcomes, including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and some cancers. 218 The formal health sector itself also has a role to play in reducing its emissions.…”

Feeding Cities: Food Security and Ecosystem Support in an Urbanizing World

“…This complexity, coupled with the remoteness of these sites of production, can conceal their interconnectedness. However, a systems approach helps reveal how a change in one variable drives changes in the others (Proust et al 2012 ). A central focus is on the nature of the feedback loops in the system, and whether they either maintain the value of key variables of concern at roughly constant levels, or rather are driving them exponentially higher or lower.…”