36 of disease or infirmity.”156 The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) further provides that the right to health is “closely related to and dependent upon the realization of other human rights.”157 It “embraces a wide range of socioeconomic factors that promote conditions in which people can lead a healthy life, and extends to the underlying determinants of health.”158 Climate change negatively affects the right to health because humans are vulnerable to shifts in weather patterns.159 An increase in heat, for instance, affects humans in multiple ways. Directly, extreme heat can create physiological stress on the body causing dehydration, heat cramps, and heat stroke. More serious implications include hospitalization and increased risk of death from respiratory, cardiovascular, and other chronic diseases.160 Indirectly, heat can subject populations to increased transmission of food and waterborne diseases and to poor air and water quality.161This is also true for extreme weather events that severely degrade water and sanitation infrastructure leading to outbreaks of diseases.162 Variable rainfall affects freshwater supply which in turn compromises hygiene and leads to increased diarrheal diseases.163 Changes in climatic conditions can also lengthen the transmission season and widen the geographic range of diseases,164 and increase instances of “water-borne diseases and diseases transmitted through insects, snails or other cold-blooded animals.”165 156 157 Constitution of the World Health Organization, 36 Am. J. Public Health 1315, doi:10.2105/ AJPH.36.11.1315 (1946) (Preamble). United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 14: The Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health (Article 12 of the Covenant), E/C.12/2000/4 (Aug. 11, 2000), para. 3. 158 Id. at para. 4. 160 World Health Organization, Heat and Health (June 1, 2018), available at https://www.who.int/newsroom/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-heat-and-health. 159 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastrandrea, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L. White (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1132 [hereinafter IPCC, AR5 WGII]. 161 Id. 163 World Health Organization, supra note 160. 164 UNOHCHR, 2016 Report on Climate Change and the Right to Health, supra note 162. 165 World Health Organization, supra note 160. 162 United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Analytical Study on the Relationship Between Climate Change and the Human Right of Everyone to the Enjoyment of the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health: Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, A/HRC/32/23 (2016) [hereinafter UNOHCHR, 2016 Report on Climate Change and the Right to Health].