Narrating the impacts of climate change for urban health governance in Guangzhou, China

• Autor(a) principal: Liu, Jieling
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/41565
• topic: Climate change impacts; Institutional narratives; Urban health governance; Systemic approaches; Resilience; China

Global anthropogenic climate change imposes high risks on environmental sustainability and public health. The paper starts by illustrating the climate change impacts on health in Guangzhou, a rapidly expanding urban hub in China. Next, this paper investigates the institutional narratives of the climate-health nexus in Guangzhou by analysing relevant policies and work plans. Finally, the paper identifies knowledge gaps to which the paper proposes ways to improve urban health governance. The methodology includes a literature review on the health impacts of climate change, in-depth interviews with the environment and health policymakers in Guangzhou, and a policy archive review. Despite the scientific evidence of positive linkages between climate change impacts on health in Guangzhou, institutional narratives and policy responses on this linkage appear to be lacking, insufficient, or delayed. The outcomes of our narrative analysis point to the possibility that this could be due to the top-down tradition of urban governance, a lack of effective interdepartmental and cross-sectoral collaboration mechanisms, and the overall lack of institutional support for implementing the ‘Health in All Policies’ framework. The paper suggests health policymaking in Guangzhou to narrate climate change impacts more openly, scientifically to the public, and to address urgent health risks more systematically.