NEW DELHI
The government is moving towards a “district action plan” to respond to issues of climate change impacts on human health, a plan in which “both states and the Centre would work together”.
“We are moving to a district action plan with vulnerability assessment for example how air pollution has impacted our health and how heat stroke impacts us,” said Dr Aakash Shrivastava, Additional Director of the National Programme for Climate Change and Human Health (NPCCHH) NCDC, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, at an event organized by TERI titled “Climate Change Impacts on Health and Health System Response in the Indo-Pacific Region”.
“During COP-21 and COP-23 conferences, India recognized the issue that climate forces are changing the spectrum of diseases and with new energy and knowledge, we have to combat it and thus made a programme where both states and the Centre work together,” Shrivastava said.
According to Dr Shrivastava, “Everything can’t be governed in the High Court, but it should be defined at the local level.”
In 2021, the National Climate Vulnerability Assessment Report identified Jharkhand, Mizoram, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, and West Bengal as states highly vulnerable to climate change. These states, mostly in the eastern part of the country, require prioritization of adaptation interventions, the report pointed out.
The report aids in prioritizing adaptation of investments and developing and implementing adaptation programs. It provided a common framework across the states and Union Territories to make them comparable, thereby empowering the decision-making capabilities at the policy and administrative levels.
Some key indicators for that report include a percentage of the population living below the poverty line; income share from natural resources; the proportion of marginal and small landholdings, women’s participation in the workforce; the density of healthcare workers, etc.
It was part of the capacity-building program under the two missions—National Mission on Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem (NMSHE) and National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change (NMSKCC) of the National Action Plan on Climate Change.