The Cadernos do OIMC series, a continuous flow publication edited by the Interdisciplinary Observatory on Climate Change, presents in its sixteenth volume the article Health and Climate Change: Contradictions between capitalism, the environment and public health, a partnership between the OIMC and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases Evandro Chagas of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (INI/Fiocruz). Written by researchers Valdiléa Gonçalves Veloso dos Santos, Mayumi Wakimoto and Tiago Nery, this issue details the relationship between the climate emergency and current public health emergencies, analysing the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on health, highlighting the reality in Latin America.

Read an extract from the introduction:

The world is witnessing the convergence of different crises (environmental, economic, political, social and health, among others), leading many analysts to use the term ‘polycrisis’ to describe this phenomenon. The socio-environmental framework that characterises contemporary societies shows that the impact of human actions on the environment is causing increasingly complex changes, with serious impacts on health. This article argues that the serious and growing health problems cannot be understood without considering the tensions between capitalism and the environment. The climate emergency affects the global North and South differently, exacerbating inequalities of class, gender and race. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown the profound inability of most societies to deal with the kind of challenge that the Anthropocene era will face more and more often.