Giving Compass' Take:
- A study from UC Santa Barbara finds that improving health care in rural Indonesia reduced incentives for illegal logging in a nearby national park which averted millions of dollars’ worth of atmospheric carbon emissions.
- What are you doing to help develop and sustain universal health care strategies?
- Here's how states can begin cutting the costs of healthcare.
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The finding indicates that accessible and affordable health care could be a key tool for addressing the climate crisis.
Although the link may not be obvious, health care and climate change—two issues that pose major challenges around the world—are more connected than people may realize.
The analysis, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that deforestation in the national park declined 70% in the 10 years after an affordable health clinic opened in the area. This equates to more than $65 million worth of avoided carbon emissions when translated to the European carbon market, the study reports.
“…WE WERE CONTINUALLY AMAZED THAT THE DATA SUGGESTED SUCH A STRONG LINK BETWEEN IMPROVEMENTS IN HEALTH CARE ACCESS AND TROPICAL FOREST CONSERVATION.”
“The results illustrate a strong link between human health and conservation in tropical forests in the developing world,” says Andy MacDonald, assistant researcher at the Earth Research Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The Indonesian clinic accepts barter as payment and gives discounts to villages based on community-wide reductions in logging. Given its success, it could provide a blueprint for preserving the world’s biodiverse carbon sinks while reducing poverty and illness.
Read the full article about how affordable health care can help the planet by Harrison Tasoff at Futurity.