By Suvendrini Kakuchi
KYOTO, Dec 2 1997 (IPS)

Global warming is altering the environment such that it is shaping up to be a health hazard to human beings, who face increasing risks not just from pollutants in the air but from the changing nature of diseases, doctors and scientists here say.

Delegates from some 160 countries haggled over targets for reducing greenhouse gases were presented with a comprehensive report compiled by more than 400 doctors and scientists, including Nobel laurates.

Dr Eric Chivian, director of the Centre for Health and Global Environment based at the U.S.-based Harvard Medical School, called the report the “first major public statement” by doctors on the health impact of climate change.

The report had been compiled by more than 400 doctors and scientists, including some Nobel laureates.

“The impact on people’s health will be devastating,” Chivian said. “The rapid use of fossil fuels has altered the environment and it means we are conducting a gigantic experiment on humankind without their approval.”

The doctors said the worst effects would be felt in developing countries, where governments have less resources and capabilities to deal with worse natural disasters, outbreaks of disease and wrecked crops.

They said the dangers of climate change were far from theoretical, adding that it was best to take prevention measures even before there is unanimity on all scientific evidence available.

“We cannot wait till we have saltwater in our basement before we act,” remarked Dr Devra Davis of the U.S.-based World Resources Institute.

Dr Paul Epstein said there is a clear linkage between rising temperatures and the emergence of new diseases and reemergence of old ones. Changing weather patterns can alter the usual behaviour of pests and disease carriers, prompting them to reach new areas.

For instance, medical experts say the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever into mountain areas in Central Africa, Central America and parts of Asia is evidence of how hotter temperatures have encouraged the mosquito to move into areas where it could not have survived before.

Five hundred new cases of malaria are being detected in the developing countries per year, most of them in Southern Africa. Health specialists predict that 50 to 80 million people will be infected in the developing world by 2100.

The warming of the planet has already contributed to unusually heavy rains in some parts of the world, fierce cyclones in tropical countries and long droughts in yet other regions.

As a result of the disruption in weather patterns, Epstein said there has been recorded a 10-fold increase in disease-carrying pests, as their common predators have moved away to avoid changed weather conditions.

Beyond the impact of diseases, the doctors’ study added that countries have to deal with longer-term concerns such as the implications of changing weather for agriculture, food production and security.

Again, the report says, there are worrying signs. Rice crops in some developing countries have been reduced from the regular three harvests per year to only once a year.

But among the clearest proof of the toll of global warming — caused by the burning of fossil fuel by industry and power plants — is air pollution, exacerbated by the build-up of greenhouse gases.

Fine particles in the air have caused millions of people to suffer, or even die, from severe respiratory diseases. Yet air pollution is a problem that knows no national borders and does not distinguish between that produced by developed or developing countries, Davis says.

In fact, she adds, scientists have reported air pollution from Beijing moving across to Japan, and going on to affect Hawaii.

For further proof of how more and more environmental problems are transnational ones, people only have to look at how the forest fires in Indonesia earlier in the year engulfed huge swathes of South- east Asia.

Apart from the fact that the fires destroyed forests that were valuable carbon sinks against global warming, experts say people in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia were breathing in foul air equivalent to smoking 80 cigarettes a day.

As cities become more polluted and economies fill their appetite for energy with fossil fuel plants, Davis says a massive spread of pollution-related illnesses is not far off. “By the end of the second decade in the next century, the world will be recording 8 million avoidable deaths as a result of air pollution,” she said.

Dr Manuel Cesario, a Brazilian doctor at the United Nations University, urged delegates at the Kyoto conference to negotiate emission reduction targets based on health concerns and food security issues as well.

But so far, he said: “Negotiations are being conducted based on an economic development focus, but there are moral obligations toward people and health risks must be considered an important part of setting targets.”

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