Narrating the impacts of climate change for urban health governance in Guangzhou, China

ABSTRACT

Global anthropogenic climate change imposes high risks on environmental sustainability and public health. The paper starts by illustrating the climate change impacts on health in Guangzhou, a rapidly expanding urban hub in China. Next, this paper investigates the institutional narratives of the climate-health nexus in Guangzhou by analysing relevant policies and work plans. Finally, the paper identifies knowledge gaps to which the paper proposes ways to improve urban health governance. The methodology includes a literature review on the health impacts of climate change, in-depth interviews with the environment and health policymakers in Guangzhou, and a policy archive review. Despite the scientific evidence of positive linkages between climate change impacts on health in Guangzhou, institutional narratives and policy responses on this linkage appear to be lacking, insufficient, or delayed. The outcomes of our narrative analysis point to the possibility that this could be due to the top-down tradition of urban governance, a lack of effective interdepartmental and cross-sectoral collaboration mechanisms, and the overall lack of institutional support for implementing the ‘Health in All Policies’ framework. The paper suggests health policymaking in Guangzhou to narrate climate change impacts more openly, scientifically to the public, and to address urgent health risks more systematically.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change impacts
• institutional narratives
• urban health governance
• systemic approaches
• resilience
• China

This article is related to:

Asian city futures: research to help inform spatial form and health

Geolocation information

The geographical location mentioned in this research is Guangzhou city, capital of Guangdong Province, southeast China.

Acknowledgements

This research as part of the author’s PhD thesis research project has been financially supported by the Portuguese National Foundation of Sciences and Technology (FCT) under Grant number PD/BD/128209/2016 and intellectually supported by the author’s two supervisors: Professor Franz Gatzweiler, the Executive Director of the International Science Council Program “Urban Health and Wellbeing” (UHWB) hosted by the Institute of Urban Environment – Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Professor Olivia Bina, faculty member of the PhD program in Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies and Principal Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences – University of Lisbon.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/narrative.

2. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/narrative.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Foundation for Science and Technology (Portuguese: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FCT) [PD/BD/108209/2016].

Notes on contributors

Jieling Liu

Jieling Liu is a PhD candidate in Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies at Institute of Social Sciences - University of Lisbon. She has an academic background in Political Sciences and Journalism. Jieling is also junior researcher for ‘Urban Health and Wellbeing: a Systems Approach’ – the interdisciplinary program of the International Science Council. Jieling’s thesis examines the planning and governance of urban green as common-pool resources for climate change adaptation and health and wellbeing, in the context of rapid socio-economic urban development in China, with case studies drawn from Guangzhou. Her thesis applies Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development Framework for analysis.