title: Health and equity impacts of climate change in Aotearoa-New Zealand, and health gains from climate action.
abstract: Human-caused climate change poses an increasingly serious and urgent threat to health and health equity. Under all the climate projections reported in the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment, New Zealand will experience direct impacts, biologically mediated impacts, and socially mediated impacts on health. These will disproportionately affect populations that already experience disadvantage and poorer health. Without rapid global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (particularly from fossil fuels), the world will breach its carbon budget and may experience high levels of warming (land temperatures on average 4-7 degrees Celsius higher by 2100). This level of climate change would threaten the habitability of some parts of the world because of extreme weather, limits on working outdoors, and severely reduced food production. However, well-planned action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could bring about substantial benefits to health, and help New Zealand tackle its costly burden of health inequity and chronic disease.
authors.forename: Hayley
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bennett
authors.affiliation: Te Kupenga Hauora Maori, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. rg.jones@auckland.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Rhys
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Gay
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Keating
authors.forename: Alistair
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Woodward
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hales
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Metcalfe
mesh_terms: D057231:Climate Change; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006801:Humans; D009520:New Zealand; D012306:Risk