Just how unhealthy is Climate Change?

 In this blog series so far, we have discussed very intuitive meanings of water development and rather obvious environmental change impacts. In today’s post however, we will be dwelling into less mediatized and perhaps understood water development and climate change interactions. Today I will be exploring water development understood as sanitation and health and how climate change will drastically shift the paradigm of sanitation.

To illustrate the positive correlation between environmental change and increased risk regarding neglected tropical diseases (NDTs) in Africa I will be using the case study of Schistosomiasis. The disease is characterized as ‘an acute and chronic parasitic disease caused by blood flukes (trematode worms)’, the larva of which are released by freshwater snails. Contamination primarily occurs when the larva penetrates the skin during contact with the infested water and although drinking infested water isn’t directly responsible for infection, the mouth coming into contact with the infested water can lead to contamination also. The adult worms are found in blood vessels where they release eggs to be passed out of the body through excrements and urine perpetuating the transmission and the parasite’s life cycle. This occurs through excrements contaminating freshwater sources, where the eggs later hatch.

An obvious preventative measure would be ensuring safe water access and also safe disposal of human waste, however without dwelling too deep into this ‘Poolitical’ issue, this is rarely the case in many African nations. One case study showcasing the acute lack of proper sanitation services is the ‘poo protests’ in Cape Town in 2013. This phenomenon refers to several protests that occurred in Cape Town which involved bags of human waste being thrown inside local government buildings due to the lack of appropriate sanitation services and infrastructure. This was ultimately a result of an increase in urbanization which the government couldn’t provide infrastructure for, due to the lack of sufficient funds to match the urban boom. Therefore, even in the urban there were significant concerns over the lack of flushing toilets and a safe disposal of waste, as is the case in many other countries and cities of Africa. The issue described is much more complex than presented here, including dimensions of a post-apartheid society, issues of race and also gender.

So far, we’ve described sanitation issues and their relationship to water borne disease, however how does climate change make the problem even more acute? A study that modelled different snail species responsible for schistosomiasis and their response to temperature rise concluded that some species peak in abundance at higher temperature, while other might have the opposite response. Similar studies conclude that environmental change will cause more variability making the parasites harder to predict and prevent, which could increase infection. The issue with environmental change here is UNPREDICTABILITY, the same issue we have discussed in relation to climate modelling is happening here, where disease will become harder to prevent, especially in the context of unsustainable health care investments, no safe water access and basic sanitation infrastructure such as a flushing toilet.

To conclude, this post means to draw attention to the many fronts that environmental change will attack and destabilize an already crippled relationship with water on the African continent, as opposed to the obvious effects on agriculture and food security which are more popularized by the media. It aims to draw attention to the adaptation needs to climate change across multiple sectors of human ecology, rather than simply food security and weather hazards.