Researchers Urge a Local Approach to Global Climate Changes

Climate change is a global phenomenon, but not necessarily one with globally uniform impacts. While shifts in climate are producing hotter, drier conditions in some parts of the world, others are seeing increased risks of more intense storms. Such variability means that adapting to a new climate reality will ultimately be a local problem, said speakers at a recent panel discussion hosted by the Duke Global Health Institute.  

“A lot to improve community adaptation, response and resilience is happening at a very local level,” said Amruta Nori-Sarma, Ph.D., an assistant professor of environmental health and population sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, during the Nov. 12 Think Global event.. “That’s because the conditions that different communities face are highly localized, and the context that people are coming from are going to matter in terms of how solutions can be implemented.”

The discussion, which coincided with the start of the COP29 global climate conference in Azerbaijan, featured researchers who are studying the health impacts of climate in three parts of the world that are seeing some of the most extreme climate changes. They emphasized that meaningful actions to protect people from harm are most likely to come from understanding local contexts and engaging with the communities most impacted by changing weather patterns.

While wide-scale studies of planetary changes may generate headlines, for local policymakers, “what’s more impactful is having local evidence,” said Nelson Gouveia, M.D, a professor of global health at the University of São Paulo Medical School, who has studied the impact of air pollution and environmental contamination on communities in Brazil. “Local data may be stronger evidence for stakeholders than something published in an important journal.”

Dino Martins, Ph.D., a Kenyan biologist who leads the Turkana Basin Institute at Stony Brook University, noted that soaring temperatures and unpredictable rainfall patterns are threatening the way of life for people who have farmed in the Turkana region, part of northern Kenya, for millennia. But people who live in the region – believed to be the area where humans first evolved more than 60,000 years ago – have a long history of adapting to change, he said.

“We’ve adapted to life at 50 degrees Celsius,” he said. “We’ll figure it out, but it’s a question of how we make that work across the whole planet?”

Nori-Sarma, who studies the correlation between rising temperatures and heat stress in India, described how people approach her with stories about how heat has affected them and their families. She said those kinds of interactions offer a gateway to understanding what communities want and need to protect themselves from extreme weather. 

“We don’t need to bring our methods and data into the conversation. We can leverage people’s lived experiences and the ways the environment is impacting their health to support interventions that communities would like to advocate for on their own behalf," she said.

The panelists also discussed how climate changes are creating new research questions that need to be addressed, such as the impact of increased heat exposure on chronic and respiratory diseases, as well as the effects of a changing climate on mental health.

“Another area that is very important is that climate change has implications for displacement for people who have to move around within their country or a broader climate migration,” Nori-Sarma noted. “That can have a lot of health impacts as well, and it’s an understudied area.”

The event was organized and co-moderated by Mercedes Bravo, Ph.D., an assistant research professor of global health, and Nishad Jayasundara, Ph.D., the Juli Plant Grainger Assistant Professor of Global Environmental Health with DGHI and the Nicholas School of the Environment. Bravo and Jayasundara are part of an effort within DGHI to elevate research on the health impacts of climate change as part of Duke’s Climate Commitment.