WHO’s Western Pacific region, the agency’s most populous, is home to nearly two billion people, including some small island nations like Fiji, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands whose very existence is threatened by climate change.

And yet, no one really knows how many people are on the move due to climate-related extreme weather events that are eroding coastlines, encroaching on communities and curbing traditional economic activities, triggering displacement and migration in small island states and beyond.

To address such gaps, the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific Regional Office recently launched a research agenda asking countries in the region to track such movements, amongst a host of other climate-related health risks.

Central to the initiative is the understanding that climate change, migration or displacement and health are intrinsically linked, said Sandro Demaio, Director of the WHO’s Asia-Pacific Centre for Environment and Health (ACE), in a webinar launching the initiative on Monday.

“Despite the growing recognition that these interconnected issues exist and are playing out in real time, important knowledge gaps remain. We still need a better understanding, more clarity, more commitment, more depth of how climate change influences patterns of migration and displacement, and how these dynamics affect health outcomes,” Demaio said.

The agenda is meant to push countries to create sound evidence, allocate finances and design effective interventions as they draft their national climate and health policies.

In focus: Western Pacific and Asia region

Currently, most studies come from high-income settings. Apart from that, “limited evidence exists on anxiety, trauma, depression, and resilience among people displaced by climate-related events,” said Dr Santino Severoni, Director of the Health and Migration Programme at WHO, Geneva.

“More research is needed on children, older adults, pregnant women, people with disabilities, and Indigenous communities affected by climate,” he added.

Push to focus on health of migrant and displaced populations

Recognizing that the Western Pacific region is a large one, WHO has tweaked the agenda to make it more tailored to the Pacific as well as the Asia sub-regions, respectively.

For the Pacific region, the WHO has asked countries to focus on research on cultural loss as the small-island states battle for their survival.

“In the Asian sub-region, the report flags visa status and labor exploitation as major under-research commercial determinants,” said Brian Hall, Director of the Center for Global Health Equity, NYU Shanghai.

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Health of migrants central to delivering universal healthcare

Within migrant communities, as well, there are particularly vulnerable sub-groups, including entirely stateless populations, as well as women, children and older people, who may be disproportionately hit.

“Most countries don’t disaggregate health data by migration status, so we’re flying blind on maternal and child health, immunization, and chronic disease in micro populations,” Hall said.

A key WHO ask of the countries is that they also empower communities to lead the research.

“First and foremost, involve the communities from the beginning when the research questions are defined, not only during the data collection. Second, I would say recognize the lived experience of young people as their expertise, because young people in communities on the move should help shape the evidence and inform the policy priorities,” said Salsabila Rashid, youth representative of the New York – based civil society group, Migration Youth and Children Platform.

Image Credits: WHO/Yoshi Shimizu, WHO, WHO.