Mudanças climáticas, mortalidade e adaptação no Brasil

• Autor(a) principal: Souza, Elvanio Costa de
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: LOCUS Repositório Institucional da UFV
• Texto Completo: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/142
• topic: Mudanças climáticas; Mortalidade; Adaptação; Climate change; Mortality; Adaptation; CNPQ::CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS

Evidence indicates that emissions of greenhouse gases, due to human activity, have altered Earth s climate and consequently affected human health, agriculture, forestry, species/ecosystems, sea level, among others. Brazil may be considered a vulnerable area to climate change impacts on health, due to its geographical features, climate profile, its large population, and its structural and social problems. Thus, this study aimed to develop a partial estimate of health related welfare impacts of climate change on Brazil. Initially, we tried to assess how temperature changes affect population mortality rate and residential electrical energy consumption (due to use of goods that preserve the individuals' health), estimating equations for panel data. From the estimated coefficients and climate projections, we tried to predict the climate change impacts on mortality and residential electrical energy consumption in the coming years. Finally, population willingness to pay/accept for climate change was calculated. Results showed that the clearest relationship between temperature and mortality occurs for deaths due to circulatory problems. The biggest temperature impacts on mortality rate occur among children and elderly, especially males. Among elderly people, the impact of higher temperatures on the mortality rate is positive for women and negative for men. Estimates of additional annual number of deaths in the 2010-2039, 2040-2069, and 2070-2099 periods indicate that climate change will mostly affect children under one year of age, especially males. It is also predicted that warmer months in the future should raise women mortality in higher magnitudes than for men. This is due largely to the predicted reduction in mortality among elderly men. With the exception of southern states, which will be benefited by reduction in the number of cold months in the coming decades, climate change should lead to an increased mortality rate in all other states, especially in the North region. Relationship between temperature and residential electrical energy consumption in Brazil is positive and almost linear. The largest impacts of climate change on energy consumption will occur in the South and Northeast regions. Due to adaptations to climate change, annual per capita residential electrical energy consumption in Brazil should grow from 6 to 6.6% in the 2070-2099 period. When calculating population s annual willingness to pay to avoid climate change, values ranging from US$ 10,7 billion to US$ 108,31 billion were found (0.5% and 4.7% of Brazilian GDP in 2010, respectively). Thus, results showed that the impacts of climate change on mortality vary by sex, age, and place of residence, and that these would probably be higher without the increase in electricity consumption.