Policy and Environmental Issues

Policy and Environmental Issues
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Policy and Environmental Issues
Climate change often leads to far-reaching implications. One of the critical areas that climate change may impact is population health. The adverse effects emerging from climate change may affect various sections of the population disproportionately. While a changing climate can affect anyone, not everyone is equally at risk because specific groups and communities face increased climate exposure and sensitivity due to various factors. This disproportionate impact of climate change on different population sections and vulnerable populations constitutes a major problem that needs solutions anchored on policy frameworks. Climate change is gaining more attention from the media, academia, political circles, and businesses. However, its impact on minorities and indigenous groups gets insufficient attention, and these marginalized and vulnerable groups are the worst affected.
The changing climatic effects are more often adverse – hurricanes, droughts, burning, and worse floods present with far-reaching on human health and quality of life. The primary challenge involves general failure to recognize and respond to minorities’ problems resulting from socio-economic and political inequities, thereby exacerbating their suffering. Disadvantages, disparities, and discrimination affect marginalized and minority ethnic communities at every level. These levels or stages can include the period before climatic disasters, their immediate aftermath, and official planning at local, federal, state, or national levels in comprehensive program design to mitigate and prevent climate-related disasters. and international levels to cope with the current and future impacts of climate change. The close relationship of some indigenous peoples and minorities with their natural environments makes them especially sensitive to the effects of global warming.
More often, people of color, underserved communities, ethnic minorities, and marginalized groups face systemic injustices that predispose more to climate change's potential health impacts. Climate change can hurt human health. The Black community, Hispanic and American Indian, and Alaska Native ethnic groups suffer the most from climate adversities partly due to systemic injustices (Apha.org, 2020). Thus, health departments, state, federal, and local authorities should develop a framework that nurtures justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) that optimally gathers for the interest of the most vulnerable population during climate crisis effects (American Public Health Association,2020). These frameworks should be crafted and implemented through policy development. Nurses play a critical role in highlighting the disparities in health among the different populations in risk exposure. The nurse should actively engage in advancing the health promotion agenda that need to be entrenched in policy frameworks that would provide a blueprint of its implementation.
The health departments and environmental agencies are positioned to drive health equity with innovative policies and programs for climate adaptation planning. State and other relevant stakeholders are expected to inculc...