Page 16 - UmRio Sustainability - Action Plan

CLIENT REQUIREMENTS & KEY STAKEHOLDERS

Climate change is impacting mental health directly, for example, by making
exposure to traumatic events more prevalent due to more frequent and intense
extreme weather events, as well as indirectly, by worsening known social
determinants of mental health such as poverty. The latest International Panel on
Climate Change report in 2022 stated that there is “high confidence” that climate
change has adversely affected the mental health of people in the assessed regions.
Similarly, the World Health Organization (WHO) policy brief on climate change and
mental health states that “climate change is increasingly having stronger and longer-
lasting impacts on people, which can directly and indirectly affect their mental health
and psychosocial well-being” (Alford et al., 2023)

HEALTH:
The overall health of Morro do Castro residents is mainly affected by extreme heat

and flooding due to excessive rains (Feitosa Callou Moura et al., 2021). UmRio would
like to understand better how to help residents mitigate these issues through legal
and stable access to renewable energy to power cooling systems and electricity, as
well as how to help residents build and or/adapt their homes and neighborhoods to
reduce flooding and decrease the chances of breeding mosquitoes that can carry
dengue and other diseases. The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change
states, “In 2018-2022, people experienced on average 86 days of health-threatening
high temperatures annually. 60% of such temperatures were made more than twice
as likely to occur by human-caused climate change” (Lancet Countdown on Health
and Climate Change, n.d.). FioCruz notes that “Climate change affects health and can
influence the spread of vectors, water quality, and food production, in addition to
contributing to air pollution. The diseases most sensitive to these changes are
infectious diseases, such as leishmaniasis, malaria, dengue fever, and other
arboviruses in addition to hepatitis, which, as it occurs through water transmission, is

especially common in territories lacking basic sanitation” (Mudanças climáticas, n.d.).

EMPLOYABILITY:
Excessive weather events create difficulties for residents to work, whether it is
manual labor, which is often outside, problems with public transportation due to
flooding, or adverse health effects from climate change that prevent people from
working. UmRio would like to understand better how to create skills and
opportunities around climate change mitigation for residents and better plan for
disruptions to their ability to work and arrive due to extreme weather events. A
recent study that examined the effect of global warming on nearly 100 countries for
the 28 years prior to 2020 found that “The robust results show that global warming
raises the unemployment rate through the inflation rate, agricultural production,
and urbanization. High-temperature weather will increase the possibility of
rainstorms, floods, forest fires, and extreme weather and change the structure of
economic production activities, especially the labor market.

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