Wind Turbine (c) SXC

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Another blog post in this series highlighted that whilst adaptation measures will be required to protect against climate changes that are already ‘locked-in’ due to past emissions, a ‘mitigation-first’ approach is clearly the most desirable pathway given uncertainties about the future, the risks an ‘adaptation-first’ approach may hold, and the health and other co-benefits action to mitigation of GHG emissions would bring. However, the question then arises – what policies and other enabling architecture are needed to pursue such a direction?

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Thames Barrier (c) M Knight, UCL

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Climate change poses a substantial risk to human societies. Indeed, as concluded by the first Lancet Commission on Climate Change and Health and reaffirmed by the second Commission report released this week, ‘climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21^st Century’. In economic terms, if we continue on our current path, the influential 2007 Stern Review concluded that we might experience costs equivalent to reducing annual global GDP by 5-20% ‘now, and forever’. As such, it is clear that action to prevent such impacts must be taken.

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