Climate change mitigation and prep in two free guidebooks

From shifts in summer temperatures to potential disease outbreaks, thousands of communities across the country are striving to mitigate -- and prepare for -- the local impact of climate change. For municipalities and agencies overwhelmed with the task, the University of Oregon's Climate Leadership Initiative created two guidebooks aimed at easing the burden.

The guidebooks, Ready for Change: Preparing Public Health Agencies for the Impacts of Climate Change and Leading by Example: Emissions Reductions in Public Health Agencies, are available free online. I spoke recently with Stacy Vynne, co-writer of the guidebooks.

How did the manuals come about and why were they necessary?

About two years ago the Oregon Coalition of Local Health Officials contacted us. They were interested in assessing what the Oregon county public health departments were doing about climate change and if they were beginning to take action to either reduce emissions or to educate their communities. We worked with them in 2008 to develop a survey that was sent out to all the county public health departments. We had a pretty good response rate. There was quite a bit of knowledge of even local impacts that some of these communities might experience from climate change.

But they did not have the capacity to do anything about it. They didn't have the resources. They didn't know what actions to start taking. This just wasn't a priority. We reviewed other efforts in order to develop a guidebook about how to integrate climate change initiatives into public health efforts. We looked at a lot of work done by the EPA, NIH, CDC, as well as a number of nonprofits around the country. We felt there was a gap in terms of offering clear guidelines to reduce emissions and prepare employees and communities for the health impacts of climate change. There was a gap in providing clear, easy steps that can be implemented into existing programs.

How did the Oregon counties expect to be affected by climate change?

Probably for Oregon [one of the biggest concerns is] heat. We don't have air-conditioning. Not many communities have set up cooling centers. With a lot of the modeling we're doing in our other projects, we're looking at in 30 to 40 years having somewhere between an eight to 10 degree Fahrenheit increase during the summer months. Most of our communities aren't prepared for that. The greatest concern is around heat illness and heat stroke.

Impacts from flooding on water quality was another big concern. The sewage and the municipal water infrastructure are linked here, so from the floods there is often contamination of the drinking water supply. The third concern is disease outbreak, such as West Nile Virus. There is just not the capacity to deal with multiple events in a single year.

How will the guidebooks help communities deal with these issues?

The mitigation manual provides basic steps that public health agencies can take to reduce their footprint. We divided the manual into different chapters that focus on energy consumption in buildings, employee transportation, ways to educate their clients about lower-emission transportation options. There is a section on food, as well as purchasing. There are simple steps they can take to make changes that have a lower impact. We also provide recommendations for policy language they can use to implement these strategies on a larger level. For the strategies, we used symbols to indicate whether it takes additional capacity, what the estimated cost of implementing it is and what type of emissions mitigation it would have.

The preparedness manual is focused on how public health agencies can prepare their employees for the health impacts of climate change and how they can prepare their communities and help build the ability of individuals to take action. We divide it up into the major health threats that climate change poses around the country. We look at disease outbreak, heat, mental health, impacts to food and water. In each of those areas, we provide an overview on the health impacts, which populations are most vulnerable. We provide suggested actions that agencies can take to educate and support employees and work they can do in their communities. In both manuals we provide case studies from around the country. We also provide sample language for communicating with the public about these issues.

What are some examples of the strategies outlined in the manuals?

In the section on reducing risk to employees, the steps are pretty simple especially after what we've gone through this year with the flu virus. We talk about washing hands. We make a recommendation for vaccinating employees because they're likely to be around more people that are being affected by diseases. The recommendations include mosquito repellent, checking for ticks. We provide resources for educational posters in English and Spanish. We also mention they can create agency-wide policies around absences in the case of these outbreaks and develop relationships with the medical community to monitor infectious diseases. In terms of reducing public risk, we talk about the need for encouraging collaboration with nonprofits or researchers, perhaps working with universities to develop real-time monitoring programs.

Would these guidebooks be useful across the country, not just to Oregon communities?

The steps we recommend are definitely relevant across the country. There are going to be different concerns for different communities, so they will need to have their own focus built out of these manuals. Some internal politics will vary state-to-state, but the suggested recommendations are relevant across the country.

Image, top: Ready for Change guidebook cover

Image, bottom: Stacy Vynne

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com