Cities in the Global South face pressing climate related health challenges. Climate change adds an additional layer of vulnerability to settlements with attributes of tenure insecurity, a fragile built environment, inadequate infrastructure and services, inequitable access to health systems and socio-economic exclusion.
Vulnerable settlements are on the frontline of climate change and are already experiencing associated health problems. Not only are the data on the impacts of climate on health in vulnerable settlements poorly understood, these settlements are also distanced from decision makers. Further, in many contexts, the narrative and response to climate hazards reproduces inequalities using the language of climate action.
If Cities Could Speak spatialises climate impacts on health with a focus on vulnerable settlements, to build and communicate understandings of pathways from climate hazards to health outcomes that are rooted in specific contexts across the Global South.
This work focusses on vulnerable settlements across countries in the Global South that concentrate pre- and post-exposure vulnerabilities, the nature of the climate risk, the type and severity of health outcomes, and the possibilities of adaptation.
It understands vulnerable settlements to mean sites with one or more of the following attributes: tenure insecurity, a fragile built environment, inadequate infrastructure and services, inequitable access to health systems and socio-economic exclusion.
Mapping Climate-Health Pathways in the Global South
How can climate impacts on health be spatialised in the Global South, to build pathways from climate hazards to health outcomes?
Everyday Resilience: Resident Perspectives from the Global South
How do residents of vulnerable settlements in cities of India, Kenya, Sierra Leone and South Africa perceive, experience, and respond to climate impacts on urban health?
Community Narratives on Climate and Health
What are the narratives of residents of vulnerable settlements on climate change and health?
Comparative research across the Global South
Comparative research approach across sites in the Global South – Delhi, Kalaburgi, Patna, Trivandrum, Freetown, Cape Town and Nairobi.
Focus on communication, storytelling, and building archives
The focus of the study is to enable pathways forward, which is why communication, narratives and building archives of emerging research is a clear work package from the onset of the study.
Connecting health and climate
Bridging Health and Climate research through the site of vulnerable settlements as a spatial site that connects these two themes.
This work co-produces evidence and narratives with residents on how climate change is impacting their health to address gaps to:
(a) synthesise and contextualise the impacts of climate change on health in vulnerable urban settlements in India, Kenya, Sierra Leone and South Africa;
(b) co-produce compelling storylines of health-related climate impact and responses in order to bring causal pathways to life; and
(c) develop new approaches to achieving impact at multiple scales.
