External seminar - Rémy Slama (INSERM) et Kévin Jean (CPJ ENS)

Climate change is a complex global challenge that is disrupting the balance and functioning of the planet's ecosystems and threatening numerous environmental compartments as well as human societies. Climate change has and will continue to have a major impact on health and social inequalities. It will do so via a number of mechanisms related to temperature, changes in biodiversity and possibly environmentally induced population displacements, which will be reviewed. Faced with this knowledge, governments have committed to drastically reducing net greenhouse gas emissions (climate change mitigation). Given that the main sectors contributing to greenhouse gas emissions (transport, agriculture, energy production, buildings) are linked to major health risk factors (physical activity for transport, diet for agriculture, exposure to atmospheric pollutants for energy production, etc.), climate change mitigation could have a significant impact on health. The same applies to climate change adaptation strategies. The implementation of adaptation and mitigation measures may thus a priori be viewed as a unique opportunity to improve public health, or as threat for health. Moreover, the health co-benefits of mitigation strategies (e.g. related to reduced fine-particle emissions and increased physical activity, in the case of a shift in road traffic from internal combustion towards "active" modes of transport) are likely to manifest themselves much more quickly than the climatic benefits. These co-benefits are also likely to occur locally, even in the absence of widespread adoption across the planet, whereas climate benefits may not be realized until strong measures are taken in many countries. Moreover, the causes of climate change and its impacts are distributed very unevenly within and across societies, and certain prevention actions may, in general, tend to exacerbate inequalities. It is therefore essential that health and social inequalities be considered in the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies. 

In this context, ENS-PSL and Inserm are willing to develop a research structure, the PARSEC (Paris Recherche Santé Environnement Climat) whose aims are:

1. To identify and describe the consequences of climate change on health, social inequalities and the environment, and quantify their societal cost ("impacts" axis).
2. To help society identify solutions for adapting to climate change and transition paths to carbon neutrality (mitigation) that are optimal in terms of human health, reducing inequalities and preserving the environment; to help identify the levers that will enable these paths to be taken ("trajectories" axis).
3. To disseminate knowledge concerning climate disturbances and their impact on health, and the individual and collective changes that could help limit these impacts, and to train tomorrow's researchers on these issues ("dissemination" axis).

This research structure, created with a view to aiding decision-making, would guide France and Europe in making urgent societal choices by simultaneously considering the environment, health and society.