Climate change threatens hard-earned global health and development progress and puts the health, well-being, and livelihoods of future generations in jeopardy, with a special impact on women. The 2015
Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals signaled a promise from global leaders to act – to limit global average temperature rise to within 1.5°C by 2040 and prevent the worst health and development effects of climate change. While no one is safe from these risks, the people whose health and wellbeing are being harmed first and worst by the climate crisis are also the ones who contribute least to its causes, and who are least able to protect themselves and their families against it – namely people in low-income and disadvantaged countries and communities. In low-income settings, rising heat, extreme weather events, changes in precipitation patterns, climate-related undernutrition, shifts in duration and climate-event-driven surges of malaria and other vector borne diseases such as malaria, foodborne and water-borne diseases, and increased potential for the emergence of novel diseases damage already weak primary health care systems and community structures for health. This compromises accessibility, availability, provision, and uptake of essential health services for the most vulnerable populations. Climate change can also disproportionately affect the health and financial wellbeing of women and girls: extreme heat increases the incidences of stillbirth, the rampant spread of vector-borne diseases worsens maternal and neonatal outcomes, and gender disparities amplified by climate change can decrease the women’s share of economic agricultural gains. Those same changes in
climate and weather also negatively impact all aspects of agricultural activities, a major source of income for those in low-income settings.
This call sought innovative research and pilot/feasibility projects
utilizing transdisciplinary approaches to better adapt to, mitigate, or reverse the combined, deleterious effects of climate change on health, women’s lives, and agriculture in the geographies of interest. These
innovations include early warning and disease surveillance systems to respond to climate-event-driven surges in malaria and other vector borne diseases, as well as improved mapping of expanded vector ranges and vector-borne disease transmission. Preference will be given to innovations that are formulated locally or adapted from other contexts. We are especially interested in 1) locally led, system level innovations that are scalable and sustainable and 2) cross-cutting solutions at the intersection of multiple scientific and engineering disciplines.
