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Health professional's willingness to advocate for strengthening global commitments to the Paris climate agreement: Findings from a multi-nation survey.

ABSTRACT: Health professionals have the potential to address the health threats posed by climate change in many ways. This study sought to understand the factors that influence health professionals' willingness to engage in climate advocacy. We hypothesized and tested a model with six antecedent factors predicting willingness to engage in advocacy for strengthening global commitments to the Paris Agreement. Using survey data from members of health professional associations in 12 nations (n = 3,977), we tested the hypothesized relationships with structural equation modeling. All of the hypothesized relationships were confirmed. Specifically, higher rates of perceived expert consensus about human-caused climate change predicted greater climate change belief certainty and belief in human causation. In turn, all three of these factors, including higher levels of perceived health harms from climate change, positively predicted affective involvement with the issue. Affective involvement positively predicted the feeling that health professionals have a responsibility to deal with climate change. Lastly, this sense that climate advocacy is a responsibility of health professionals strongly predicted willingness to advocate. As a unique study of predictors of health professionals' willingness to advocate for climate change, our findings provide unique insight into how an influential set of trusted voices might be activated to address what is arguably the world's most pressing public health threat. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are presented, and implications for message development are discussed.

SUBMITTER: Lee HR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8262252 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundInstituted under the Paris Agreement, nationally determined contributions (NDCs) outline countries' plans for mitigating and adapting to climate change. They are the primary policy instrument for protecting people's health in the face of rising global temperatures. However, evidence on engagement with health in the NDCs is scarce. In this study, we aimed to examine how public health is incorporated in the NDCs, and how different patterns of engagement might be related to broader inequalities and tensions in global climate politics.MethodsWe analysed the NDCs in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change registry submitted by 185 countries. Using content analysis and natural language processing (NLP) methods, we developed measures of health engagement. Multivariate regression analyses examined whether country-level factors (eg, population size, gross domestic product [GDP], and climate-related exposures) were associated with greater health engagement. Using NLP methods, we compared health engagement with other climate-related challenges (ie, economy, energy, and agriculture) and examined broader differences in the keyword terms used in countries with high and low health engagement in their NDCs.FindingsCountries that did not mention health in their NDCs were clustered in high-income countries, whereas greater health engagement was concentrated in low-income and middle-income countries. Having a low GDP per capita and being a small island developing state were associated with higher levels of health engagement. In addition, higher levels of population exposure to temperature change and ambient air pollution were associated with more health coverage included in a country's NDC. Variation in health engagement was greater than for other climate-related issues and reflected wider differences in countries' approaches to the NDCs.InterpretationA focus on health in the NDCs follows broader patterns of global inequalities. Poorer and climate-vulnerable countries that contribute least to climate change are more likely to engage with health in their NDCs, while richer countries focus on non-health sectors in their NDCs, such as energy and the economy.FundingThis work was in part funded through an unrestricted grant from the Wellcome Trust and supported by The Economic and Social Research Council.

Project description:The concept of “committed emissions” allows us to understand what proportion of the Paris-constrained and rapidly diminishing global carbon dioxide (CO2) budget is potentially taken up by existing infrastructure. Here, this concept is applied to international shipping, where long-lived assets increase the likelihood for high levels of committed emissions. To date, committed emissions studies have focussed predominantly on the power sector, or on global analyses in which shipping is a small element, with assumptions of asset lifetimes extrapolated from other transport modes. This study analyses new CO2, ship age and scrappage datasets covering the 11,000 ships included in the European Union’s new emissions monitoring scheme (EU MRV), to deliver original insights on the speed at which new and existing shipping infrastructure must be decarbonised. These results, using ship-specific assumptions on asset lifetimes, show higher committed emissions for shipping than previous estimates based on asset lifetimes similar to the road transport sector. The estimated baseline committed emissions value is equivalent to 85–212% of the carbon budget for 1.5 °C that is available for these EU MRV ships, with the central case exceeding the available carbon budget. The sector does, however, have significant potential to reduce this committed emissions figure without premature scrappage through a combination of slow speeds, operational and technical efficiency measures, and the timely retrofitting of ships to use zero-carbon fuels. Here, it is shown that if mitigation measures are applied comprehensively through strong and rapid policy implementation in the 2020s, and if zero-carbon ships are deployed rapidly from 2030, it is still possible for the ships in the EU MRV system to stay within 1.5 °C carbon budgets. Alongside this, as there are wide variations between and within ship types, this new analysis sheds light on opportunities for decision-makers to tailor policy interventions to deliver more effective CO2 mitigation. Delays to appropriately stringent policy implementation would mean additional measures, such as premature scrappage or curbing the growth in shipping tonne-km, become necessary to meet the Paris climate goals.

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Health professional's willingness to advocate for strengthening global commitments to the Paris climate agreement: Findings from a multi-nation survey.

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