Page 901 - Week 03 - Thursday, 7 April 2022
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
earlier this year in response to the United Nations Human Rights Council declaration that the right to a healthy environment is a human right. It is timely that this year’s World Health Day recognises the link between our health, our planet, our rights and the need for equity.
The ACT government is committed to ensuring that the health and wellbeing of all Canberrans is at the forefront of our decision-making, through the ACT wellbeing framework. Wellbeing is about all Canberrans having the opportunity and ability to lead lives of personal and community value, with qualities such as good health, time to enjoy the things that matter, and an environment that promotes personal growth and is sustainable.
The World Health Day 2022 theme, Our Planet, Our Health, serves to remind us that more can be done to mitigate the impacts of climate change and adapt to these locally, nationally and globally. The World Health Organization notes that globally more than 90 per cent of people breathe unhealthy air resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. A heating world is seeing mosquitoes spread disease further and faster than ever before. We have been seeing the impact of mosquito-spread disease in the recent outbreak of the Japanese encephalitis virus in Australia and the human and animal health impacts of that, as well as the cost to society of then ameliorating and addressing those impacts.
Extreme weather events, land degradation and water scarcity are displacing people and affecting their health. Pollution and plastics are found at the bottom of our deepest oceans and have made their way into our food chain. Food systems that are skewed towards highly processed, unhealthy food and beverages are driving a wave of obesity, increasing cancer and heart disease, but they are also generating a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The ACT government has been considering and responding to the growing risks of climate change and these impacts on the ACT community and government operations for more than a decade. The ACT government has been preparing for climate change by adopting a variety of policy responses, including the ACT Climate Change Strategy 2019-25 and Canberra’s Living Infrastructure Plan: Cooling the City. These strategies focus on actions which set us up to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change in the territory.
We are beginning to see the real-world impacts of climate change on Australia and in the ACT. Over the previous four years we have seen firsthand the environmental and community impacts of extreme heat, bushfires, drought and severe storms in the ACT, as well as the terrible impacts of floods across Australia’s eastern seaboard. The health impacts of climate change are tangible and significant. These include respiratory and heart disease, mental illness, allergies, injuries, food poisoning and poor nutrition. And these are just some of the ways that a changing climate affects us all.
If we want to continue to achieve our shared vision of Canberra being the healthiest place in the world to live and a city of high wellbeing for all, we must continue to develop ways to respond and adapt our health sector to our changing climate and
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video