World Health Day - 7th April

Today, 7 April is observed the world over as World Health day.It marks the anniversary of the World Health Organization(WHO), commemorating its 60th year of unflinching commitment to the establishment of global health. Every year this day is observed as World health day, and organized around a predetermined theme to raise awareness of key global public health challenges.
World Health Day, this year, embodies the theme, ‘Protect Health from Climatic Change’.
Each year, The World Health Day, seeks to attract worldwide attention on imminent public health challenges facing the world. Global warming and its causative factors is a growing preoccupation amongst world bodies, owing to its impact on the global landscape and health of the population. The initiatives of the World Health Day, 2008, hope to explore the strategies required to protect health of population worldwide from the ravages of climatic changes.
Understanding Impact of Climatic Changes on Health :
It is common to expect that the natural outcome of industrialization is a booming economy which in turn could offer better health to populations worldwide. On the contrary, the cost of industrialization is heavy, resulting in a gush of green house emissions that can potentially trigger dramatic environmental changes. These changes have the potential to have a negative impact on health.
Recently, the Arctic and Antarctic regions in the world have been witness to an increase in surface temperatures. This has resulted in the warming of the permafrost and melting of sea ice. A recent study undertaken to study the effects of global warming on climatic zones with the help of global climate models has forecast the complete disappearance of tropical highlands and areas near the poles in the next century. Such models portend that 39% of the land on the earth is likely to experience completely new climates by 2100. This is thought to have a negative impact on the ecosystem.
The most severely affected parts is predicted to be the thickly populated regions in the world, for instance the South Eastern parts of United States, South Eastern Asia and parts of Africa. The areas famous for its biodiversity like the Amazonian rainforest, the mountain ranges of Africa and South America are also likely to face striking ecological shifts propelled by climatic changes.
The risks to health are innumerable with world population witnessing heat waves, wild fires, floods and unprecedented swings in the pattern of infectious diseases. According to the WHO, 25% of the world’s disease is due to contamination of air, food, water and soil caused by dramatic changes in climate.
For instance global warming can make tropical regions warmer. This could potentially steer the animal life and vegetation northwards, spawning the growth of vector-borne diseases in otherwise unheard of regions. This could endanger the health of about 70 million people, who may end up living in malaria-prone areas.
Heat connected deaths, infectious diseases, pollution-related diseases and malnutrition is predicted to witness an upward trend due to climatic changes. Climatic shifts may also have a negative effect on world food supplies as they are crucially dependent on the nature of soil, climate and water. It is becoming increasingly evident that even a few degrees of alteration in temperature can create a rippling effect. The 2004 heat wave in Europe, that claimed as many as 30,000 lives, offers just a peek into the magnitude of destruction unleashed by the effects of climatic changes on human health.

Global warming effecting India :

In India, weather-related natural disasters already caused annual chaos.

In year 2000, whole regions of West Bengal disappeared under water - rescue workers had to use boats to give emergency help to more than 16 million affected people.
These were the worst floods for more than 20 years. Several factors were blamed - from silted riverbeds to mismanagement of resources. But could global warming also have played a part?

"Global warming is going to make other small local environmental issues... seem like peanuts, because it is the big one which is going to come and completely change the face of the Earth.

Take one more instance ,THE evolving weather in the State of Kerala, marked by sudden drenchers interspersed with long dry spells in March 2005, is the best available indicator yet of the lengthening shadow of global warming creeping into our own backyard.

Among the most severe consequences of global warming are: a faster rise in sea level, more heat waves and droughts, resulting in more and more conflicts for water resources; more extreme weather events producing floods and property destruction; and a greater potential for heat-related illnesses and deaths as well as the wider spread of infectious diseases carried by insects and rodents into areas previously free from them.

Seal cubs threatened by global warming, WWF warns

Hundreds of newborn seal cubs risk dying of hunger and cold because global warming is making ice in the Arctic Circle melt too fast, the World Wide Fund for Nature in Germany warned Monday.
"In some parts perhaps not a single one of the seal cubs born in the past few weeks will survive," the WWF said in a statement. It said hundreds of the roughly 1,500 ringed seal cubs born this month and last month were in danger. Seal cubs spend the first weeks of their lives in burrows dug in the ice sheet but if that melts, they find themselves in the ocean before they have built up a fat layer that will enable them to survive, WWF's Cathrin Muenster said.
"When the ice melts too fast, the cubs end up in the ice water before they have their insulating fat layer, and they die painfully of hunger and cold." The WWF said there was less ice in the Arctic this winter than at any point in the past 300 years. It said the seal cubs most at risk were those along the southwest coast of Finland, the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga, but warned that the layer of pack ice in the Gulf of Bothnia between Sweden and Finland is also thinner than usual.
WWF estimates that there are between 7,000 and 10,000 ringed seals in the Arctic, compared to 180,000 a century ago. Scientists say the Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the planet. The phenomenon also puts at risk polar bears who could become extinct as their natural habitat melts away.

A seal cub plays with its mother

I am concerned about global warming as a common man and as well as a member of WWF.

'Dangerous' Global Warming Possible by 2026 - WWF

World temperatures could surge in just two decades to a threshold likely to trigger dangerous disruptions to the earth's climate, the WWF environmental group said on Sunday.
It said the Arctic region was warming fastest, threatening the livelihoods of indigenous hunters by thawing the polar ice-cap and driving species like polar bears toward extinction by the end of the century.
"If nothing is done, the earth will have warmed by 2.0 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by some time between 2026 and 2060," the WWF said in a report.
Few scientists have estimated such an early date for a 2.0C rise, seen by the WWF as a threshold that may spur "dangerous" warming, raising sea levels and causing more floods, storms or droughts and driving some species to extinction.
World temperatures have already risen by about 0.7C since 1750 with most scientists blaming a build-up of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels in factories, power plants and cars.
The European Union and many other environmental groups say that governments should cap emissions of greenhouse gases to try to prevent a 2.0C temperature rise. The United States has rejected binding caps under the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol.
At some point, some scientists fear that rising temperatures could cause a runaway warming, for instance by melting permafrost in Siberia that could in turn release deposits of heat-trapping methane to the atmosphere.
"Time is running out to avoid a two degree rise," said Mark New, a climate expert at England's Oxford University who made the 2026-60 projections in the report commissioned by the WWF.
TIME BOMB?
He told Reuters his study was based on a review of climate models used by the U.N. climate panel in its latest 2001 report. Another international report last week said that rising temperatures were a ticking time bomb for the climate.
Others scientists say that such projections are scaremongering and reckon temperatures will rise far less sharply, if at all, because of the buildup of greenhouse gases.
New's study projected that the Arctic would warm by 3.2-6.6C if the globe warmed by 2.0C overall.
In the Arctic, such a warming could melt polar ice in summer by 2100, pushing polar bears toward extinction. On land, forests would grow further north, overrunning tundra that is a habitat for birds including snow buntings and terns.
"Global warming threatens to wreak havoc on the traditional ways of life of Inuit, putting an end to our hunting and food sharing culture," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference.
The Arctic warms faster than the global average because dark water and land, once uncovered, soaks up more heat than snow or ice. A report by 250 scientists last year also projected a fast warming in the Arctic that would also open new shipping routes and make the region accessible for oil and gas exploration.
The WWF report is to be presented at a conference in Exeter, England, on Feb. 1-3. The talks will focus on a 1992 U.N. convention whose goal is to stabilize greenhouse gases at levels meant to prevent "dangerous" human interference on the climate.The convention does not define what it means by "dangerous" climate change.The U.N.'s Kyoto protocol, seeking to rein in greenhouse gas emissions under the convention, will enter into force on Feb. 16. President Bush pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying it would cost too much and wrongly excludes developing nations.