China staring at deadly floods, heatwaves and pestilence as climate change hits home, study finds

Name: Chinese farmers in Henan still dealing with aftermath of country’s worst floods in decades
Uploaded: 2021-11-08T10:21:46.000Z
Duration: 1 min 59 s
Description: Chinese farmers in Henan still dealing with aftermath of country’s worst floods in decades

Climate change, the deadly impact of which is rising across China, poses bigger global public health threat than Covid-19, warns The Lancet Public Health report

A holistic, ambitious approach from world’s No 1 polluter could help prevent millions of deaths and economic loss from extreme weather, say authors

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A deadly forest fire in Sichuan province in March last year. Photo: Handout via Reuters

Simone McCarthy

Published: 6:21pm, 8 Nov 2021Updated: 11:24pm, 8 Nov 2021

From more intense floods in central China to rising threats from heatwaves and disease-carrying mosquitoes in the south – the impact of climate change on health is increasing across China, a sweeping new report has found.

An estimated 14,500 deaths across China in 2020 could be attributed to heatwaves, almost doubling a historical average from 1986 to 2005, while an estimated 1.4 per cent was knocked off China’s gross domestic product in 2020 alone as soaring temperatures cut working hours.

Exposure to wildfires in recent years has increased, as compared with two decades ago, and extreme precipitation – like the rains that caused deadly floods in Henan province earlier this year – has the potential to reverse China’s gains in flood emergency response capacity.

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Chinese farmers in Henan still dealing with aftermath of country’s worst floods in decades

Those are among the findings of a stark report from dozens of experts across 25 institutions in China and around the world. The report, published on Sunday in The Lancet Public Health journal, is part of a global initiative known as the Lancet Countdown, which looks at the relationship between health and climate change.

“The health impacts of climate change continue to worsen in every province in China and there is mixed progress in the adaptation and mitigation responses,” wrote the authors, who were led by Tsinghua University’s department of Earth system science.

“After the painful lessons from Covid-19, this important opportunity to protect the health of people in China, both now and in the future, cannot be missed.”

The findings of the China report were released on the heels of a Lancet Countdown global report published late last month, which found “a world overwhelmed by an ongoing global health crisis, which has made little progress to protect its population from the simultaneously aggravated health impacts of climate change”.