Climate change adaptation and mitigation – a hitherto neglected gender-sensitive public health perspective

ABSTRACT

Climate change is likely to bring more, hotter and longer lasting heat waves in central Europe over the coming decades. Particularly, vulnerable groups are hit harder by heat waves. A gender-sensitive perspective has not been taken into account sufficiently in scientific studies on climate change and health. This study examined the health impact of extreme heat events from a gender-sensitive perspective and measured gender-specific individual behavioural adaptation and mitigation strategies. A cross-sectional population survey was done in Leipzig, Germany, from July to October 2014. The survey was used to determine the relationship between the influencing factors such as gender, adaptive and mitigation measures and the health burden resulting from extreme heat waves. Gender-specific differences were found for type of income, personal net income and individuals who are strongly affected by persistent heat. A significant gender difference was also found for headaches, cardiovascular diseases, different climate adaptation measures and types of mitigating behaviour. These findings confirm other study results and indicate the need for further studies on gender and diversity aspects which take into account sociodemographic, socioeconomic and climate ecological differences. Taking the public health approach, surveys for adaptation and mitigation measures are needed which explicitly consider gender and target groups’ aspects.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• public health
• heat wave
• climate change
• adaptation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 No vote of the ethics committee was needed, because the survey on ‘Climate Change in Leipzig’ was realised within the energy and climate programme of Leipzig 2014–2020, an intended public participation process (Stadt Leipzig, 2015).