Managing the Health Impacts of Climate Change through Sector Projects W ithin an institution such as a development bank, the use of financial and economic cost–benefit analyses is a key to assessing projects. Managing the health impacts of climate change through sector investment projects implies explicitly accounting for these impacts in the context of such analyses. This, in turn, requires that these health impacts be identified, quantified, and then monetized. This process is described in greater detail below. Identifying and Quantifying the Health Impacts of Climate Change As illustrated in Figure 8, at the outset it is important to identify the nature of climate-sensitive diseases that affect the country or the local communities of interest. Similarly, it should be expected that the incidence of such diseases may also depend on variables other than climate variables (such as the socioeconomic characteristics of the local population). Data may be required on these other determinants to better isolate the nature of the relationship between climate and health. Finally, in a first step of identification, one must assess whether or not data is available to support any attempt to quantify and monetize the health impacts of climate change, where this data (if existing) is located, and how access may be granted. In circumstances where data may not be available, it may be of interest to identify whether data could be collected from the national health monitoring system or international sources.8 Figure 8 Pinpointing the Health Impacts of Climate Change • What are the climate-sensitive diseases of interest in the country or local communities? • What is the current burden of these diseases? • What factors other than climate should be considered? • What data is available, where, and how to access the data? • Is health monitoring system sufficient to collect the required data? Source: Author. 8 Health data can be found in various sources. The World Health Report, published by WHO, provides regional data for all major diseases (www.who.int/whr/en). WHO databases exist on water and sanitation (www.who.int/entity/water_sanitation_health/database/en), and malnutrition (www.who.int/nutgrowth/db). The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has its datasets for children’s health at its website (www.unicef.org). The International Emergency Event Database (EM-DAT) provides data on disasters (www.em-dat.net). Ministries of health perform regular disease surveillance and report results to WHO annually. Government district hospitals and private hospitals also keep health statistics regularly. 15