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AbstractThere is growing awareness among governments, businesses, and the general public of risks arising from changes to our climate on time scales from months through to decades. Some climatic changes could be unprecedented in their harmful socioeconomic impacts, while others with adequate forewarning and planning could offer benefits. There is therefore a pressing need for decision-makers, including policy-makers, to have access to and to use high-quality, accessible, relevant, and credible climate information about the past, present, and future to help make better-informed decisions and policies. We refer to the provision and use of such information as climate services. Established programs of research and operational activities are improving observations and climate monitoring, our understanding of climate processes, climate variability and change, and predictions and projections of the future climate. Delivering climate information (including data and knowledge) in a way that is usable and useful for decision-makers has had less attention, and society has yet to optimally benefit from the available information. While weather services routinely help weather-sensitive decision-making, similar services for decisions on longer time scales are less well established. Many organizations are now actively developing climate services, and a growing number of decision-makers are keen to benefit from such services. This article describes progress made over the past decade developing, delivering, and using climate services, in particular from the worldwide effort galvanizing around the Global Framework for Climate Services under the coordination of UN agencies. The article highlights challenges in making further progress and proposes potential new directions to address such challenges.

Abstract Background The social-ecological systems theory, with its unique conception of resilience (social-ecological systems & resilience, SESR), provides an operational framework that currently best meets the need for integration and adaptive governance as encouraged by the Sustainable Development Goals. SESR accounts for the complex dynamics of social-ecological systems and operationalizes transdisciplinarity by focusing on community engagement, value co-creation, decentralized leadership and social innovation. Targeting Social Innovation (SI) in the context of implementation research for vector-borne diseases (VBD) control offers a low-cost strategy to contribute to lasting and contextualized community engagement in disease control and health development in low and middle income countries of the global south. In this article we describe the processes of community engagement and transdisciplinary collaboration underpinning community-based dengue management in rural primary schools and households in two districts in Cambodia. Methods Multiple student-led and community-based interventions have been implemented focusing on empowering education, communication for behavioral change and participatory epidemiology mapping in order to engage Cambodian communities in dengue control. We describe in particular the significance of the participatory processes that have contributed to the design of SI products that emerged following iterative consultations with community stakeholders to address the dengue problem. Results The SI products that emerged following our interaction with community members are 1) adult mosquito traps made locally from solid waste collections, 2) revised dengue curriculum with hands-on activities for transformative learning, 3) guppy distribution systems led by community members, 4) co-design of dengue prevention communication material by students and community members, 5) community mapping. Conclusions The initiative described in this article put in motion processes of community engagement towards creating ownership of dengue control interventions tools by community stakeholders, including school children. While the project is ongoing, the project’s interventions so far implemented have contributed to the emergence of culturally relevant SI products and provided initial clues regarding 1) the conditions allowing SI to emerge, 2) specific mechanisms by which it happens and 3) how external parties can facilitate SI emergence. Overall there seems to be a strong argument to be made in supporting SI as a desirable outcome of project implementation towards building adaptive capacity and resilience and to use the protocol supporting this project implementation as an operational guiding document for other VBD adaptive management in the region.

Abstract This study critically examines the effect of energy poverty on health and education outcomes for 50 developing countries in the period 1990–2017. We construct an aggregate energy development index and empirically test if the effect on development outcomes is conditioned by thresholds determined by the degree of poverty and income per capita. Our empirical results show that lower energy poverty is associated with higher health and education outcomes. However, we find that access to electricity has a more substantial positive effect on development outcomes than energy use. The threshold regression estimates show that there is a greater effect of energy development index on life expectancy rates where the poverty headcount ratio is high. Conversely, energy development index has a greater effect on infant mortality rates where the poverty headcount ratio is low, or income per capita is high. We do not find a threshold effect of poverty and income per capita in the education sector. These findings have strong policy implications for developing countries, showing that a lack of access to electricity remains a critical obstacle for achieving greater economic development, and poverty plays a crucial role in shaping these countries' health outcomes.

The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change was established to provide an independent, global monitoring system dedicated to tracking the health dimensions of the impacts of, and the response to, climate change. The Lancet Countdown tracks 41 indicators across five domains: climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability; adaptation, planning, and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; finance and economics; and public and political engagement.

Malnutrition in all its forms, including obesity, undernutrition, and other dietary risks, is the leading cause of poor health globally. In the near future, the health effects of climate change will considerably compound these health challenges. Climate change can be considered a pandemic because of its sweeping effects on the health of humans and the natural systems we depend on (ie, planetary health). These three pandemics—obesity, undernutrition, and climate change—represent The Global Syndemic that affects most people in every country and region worldwide. They constitute a syndemic, or synergy of epidemics, because they co-occur in time and place, interact with each other to produce complex sequelae, and share common underlying societal drivers. This Commission recommends comprehensive actions to address obesity within the context of The Global Syndemic, which represents the paramount health challenge for humans, the environment, and our planet in the 21st century.