Briefing Paper

Integration of Health in Kenya’s Climate Change Policies

Climate change threatens human health and wellbeing through effects on weather, ecosystems, and social systems. These effects increase exposure to extreme events, change the environmental suitability for infectious disease transmission, alter population movements, and undermine people’s livelihoods and mental health. Direct and indirect health impacts associated with climate change are caused by rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns as well as increasingly severe and frequent extreme weather events. A range of social factors can act to either exacerbate the health impacts of the environmental effects of climate change or to help mitigate them with public health interventions. These interventions are well articulated in policies which provide collective interventions affecting transformation in social welfare, social institutions and social relations.