Adapting to Climate Change-Related Health Risks in Austria: Setting Priorities in Times of Financial Crisis

Introduction: Austria is already experiencing impacts of climatic shifts, which are projected to intensify in the future. This requires appropriate adaptation strategies to prevent harmful health effects. Challenges for the public health system are to be expected.

Method: Commissioned by the Austrian Ministry of Life recommendations for public health actions within the framework of the national adaptation strategy on climate change were developed. This was done by an expert-driven process, including an extensive survey conducted among leading national experts and by round-table discussions.

Results: Direct health effects of climate change with a high prognostic certainty (heat waves, heavy rainfall events) were seen as the most pressing topics for adaptation measures. In total seven areas (heat waves, floods, landslides, new and emerging pathogens, allergic plants, migration, monitoring, awareness rising) were identified that warrant specific activities. At present the set of identified recommendations has been discussed by a stakeholder forum and will update the Austrian policy paper on climate change adaptation. thereafter.

Discussion: A risk-based approach was applied to describe current and future climate impacts to prioritize key climate risks and to identify measures. Measures are adopting a variety of procedures (e.g. early warning systems, multi-level communication, city planning) to reduce risks. Key concerns are extreme weather effects. The influence of climate change-related natural disasters with property losses and displacement from residences on mental health has been underestimated so far. Migration - in terms of EU internal as well as external - also should be in focus of public health planning.

Especially in the light of the ongoing financial crisis, leading to tight public budgets, the risk of insufficient response measures increases. However, we hypothesize that early actions will be taken, because it is evident that benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs of non-acting.