Impacts of environmental and climate change on health and mortality

The Cows to Kilowatts model pioneered a new model of waste management that treats slaughterhouse effluent at the source and converts harmful greenhouse gases into clean energy through social enterprise. The innovation deploys a cutting-edge anaerobic fixed film bioreactor technology to treat abattoir waste and produce biogas more efficiently than conventional biodigester technologies. This also reduces pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and provides a cheap source of bio-energy and bio-fertilizer.
The bioreactor dubbed “Cows to Kilowatts” is located at Ibadan, the largest indigenous city in Africa. About 1000 heads of cows are slaughtered daily. The 5000m³ bioreactor is designed to capture about 1,800m³ of methane per day and generating about 0.5MW of electricity off-grid for power starved poor communities and with emission reduction of about 0.2MT of CO2 per year.
The captured methane is used to drive gas generators to provide electricity for power starved poor communities. This new waste-treatment model is revolutionizing traditional practice in slaughterhouses, contributing to safer living environments and boasting economic viability for the local economy. Operated as a social business, the profit is being invested into waste-treatment facilities in other locations, further increasing the beneficial impact.

Nigeria is often identified as the fastest moving economy and one of the most advanced ICT market sectors in Africa. In just a few years, Nigeria has become the telecommunication hotspot for both telecommunication operators and equipment suppliers. However, the growth was characterized with unprecedented release of electronic waste from the mobile phone companies into the environment and most of them highly toxic. The research addressed the adoption of environmentally sound management of electronic waste as it relates to mobile phones in Africa. Qualitative interviews were held with upper echelon executives representing firms in the Nigerian telecommunication industries with quantitative analysis using structural equation model. The study suggests the absence of legislation dealing specifically with electronic waste, inadequate infrastructure for waste management, absence of any framework for end-of-life product take-back. However, the generation of electronic waste from may turn out to be a win-win situation and clearly has inherent business opportunities for the developing countries if the adoption of environmental benign technologies and policy is embraced.

In recent years, climate change has almost becomes synonyms with development of environmental hazards adversely affecting the living being. Its adverse affects are particularly large on those segments of populations where the current burden of climate-sensitive disease is high. One such category is urban poor which is characterized by cramp living spaces, lack of sanitation and safe drinking water, poor and unhygienic environmental conditions, poor socio-economic status etc. As a consequence, their major health indicators like, morbidity (due to communicable as well non-communicable diseases) and child death rate are higher than other sections of population viz, rural and urban non-poor. It has also been observed that unlike the rural areas, programs to address socio-economic development and healthcare needs in urban poor localities have limited impact on health outcomes. Why? Is it because living environment is quite degraded (inputs are rendered ineffective) or the interventions are not penetrating or accessed by all people to realize any measurable outcome?
This paper examines this phenomenon by taking India as a case. It analyses the health outcomes for urban poor in contemporary Indian communities against the backdrop socio-economic and healthcare developments, over a period of one decade.

Rapid population growth, industrialization and urbanization accompanied by growing number of vehicles in country are adversely affecting the environment. Though the relationship is complex, population size and growth tend to expand and accelerate these human impacts on the environment and health of the people. The present paper is an attempt to study the effect of growing population on environment and health of the people. The secondary data analysis conducted of changes and trends from 1971 to 2011. The analysis reveals that rapid population growth plays an important role in the environmental problems of the country. The increasing vehicles in country are producing more air pollution. The considerable magnitude of air pollution in the country pulls up the number of people suffering from respiratory diseases and many a times leading to deaths and serious health hazards. The situation is also similar for water pollution, as both ground water and surface water contamination leads to various water borne diseases and many a times leading to deaths and serious health hazards. The analysis suggests that there is urgent need to control population and environmental pollution in the country for better quality of life and health of present and future generation.

In this paper, we do an analysis of the socio-demographic and economics factors associated with land cover change and deforestation processes in the East province of Cameroon, a region that concentrates the biggest remnants of the western Cameroonian Equatorial Forest. The main objective is to analyze the role of demographic dynamics and socio-economic development upon deforestation processes, in the last 25 years, in this region and census tracts levels. We also look at role of conservation units and topography on deforestation. The methodology for the analysis is the integration of socio-demographic data (from Cameroonian demographic census – 1976 and 1987) and land cover change data (from satellite images – Landsat TM), at different levels of aggregation (spatial scales), in a geographic information system (GIS).

Malaria, one of the major health concerns in Ghana is predicted to be impacted by climate change. This study examined the influence of rainfall and household characteristics on malaria incidence as analysed through the lenses of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change framework on climate change and health.
We used data from two sources: (i) malaria and rainfall data from the Centre for Health and Information Management and Ghana Meteorological Agency and (ii) survey of 434 representative sample households in Ga-Mashie, Accra. The data were analysed at the macro and micro levels using descriptive statistics, bivariate and multivariate techniques.
The macro level analysis shows a significant relationship between number of rain days and incidence of malaria. It was found that flooding is positve related with incidence of malaria at the micro level. Again, community of residence and level of education were significantly related with malaria incidence at the micro level.
The findings have implication for other climate sensitive diseases in Ghana and how they relate with rainfall and other climatic variables, which future studies should seek to address. Public health programmes must be intensified, focusing on all year round prevention of malaria.

Key words: Climate, Climate Variability, Flooding, Ghana

According to the FAO, since 1990-92 the prevalence of world hunger in developing countries has declined from 23.2% (980 million people) to 14.9% (852 million people) in 2010-12. Most of this decline occurred prior to 2006 and the economic crisis and increased food prices have slowed declines since. Future progress is threatened by a recent surge in food prices driven by weather extremes including a weak monsoon in India, and a crop-withering drought and heat wave in the U.S. Corn Belt. And a confluence of long-term population and environmental trends is also undermining world food availability. These trends include increased diversion of grains for biofuels, and for livestock and poultry feed, continuing poverty, climate change leading to increasingly unstable weather, shrinking availability of water, the declining productive capacity of croplands and fisheries, and rapid population growth particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Latin America and Asia have made substantial progress in reaching MDG 1.C, whereas progress has been slow in the Near East and Africa. Both rapid population growth and environmental degredation threaten future progress toward elimination of hunger. Major investment in strengthening both agriculture and family planning is needed.

The negative association between air pollution and human life expectancy is well established. Short episodes as well as continued exposure to high concentrations of sulphur dioxide (SO2) or nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are connected with increased mortality mainly from circulatory and respiratory diseases. East Germans before reunifcation suffered from consistently high levels of air pollution which dropped dramatically after the fall of the iron curtain. At the same time mortality declined and eventually converged to the West German level. This study seeks to quantify the impact of dropping SO2 and NO2 concentrations on all-cause, circulatory and respiratory mortality as well as mortality from neoplasms and its contribution to converging life expectancy between East and West Germany.

For all climatic regions, mortality due to cold exceeds mortality due to heat. A separate line of research indicates that lifespan after age 50 depends on season of birth. This and other literature implies that ambient temperature in utero may influence cold-related mortality later in life. We use data on over 13,500 Swedes (from 1915 to 2002) to test whether cold-related mortality in adulthood varies positively with exposure to unusually benign ambient temperature in utero. We specify a counting process Cox proportional hazards model to analyze the two leading causes of cold-related death: ischemic heart disease and stroke. Results indicate an increased risk of ischemic heart disease mortality during cold spells among persons exposed to relatively warm gestations. We, however, observe no relation for stroke mortality. The ischemic heart disease findings provide the first evidence that temperature during gestation—independent of month of birth—affects cold-related mortality later in life.