The health and well-being effects of drought: assessing multi-stakeholder perspectives through narratives from the UK
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The health and well-being effects of drought: assessing multi-stakeholder perspectives through narratives from the UK Kimberly Bryan 1 & Sarah Ward 1 & Liz Roberts 2 & Mathew P. White 3 & Owen Landeg 4 & Tim Taylor 3 & Lindsey McEwen 1 Received: 8 November 2019 / Accepted: 28 October 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
The global literature on drought and health highlights a variety of health effects for people in developing countries where certain prevailing social, economic and environmental conditions increase their vulnerability especially with climate change. Despite increased focus on climate change, relatively less is known about the health-drought impacts in the developed country context. In the UK, where climate change–related risk of water shortages has been identified as a key area for action, there is need for better understanding of drought-health linkages. This paper assesses people’s narratives of drought on health and well-being in the UK using a source-receptor-impact framing. Stakeholder narratives indicate that drought can present perceived health and well-being effects through reduced water quantity, water quality, compromised hygiene and sanitation, food security, and air quality. Heatwave associated with drought was also identified as a source of health effects through heat and wildfire, and drought-related vectors. Drought was viewed as potentially attributing both negative and positive effects for physical and mental health, with emphasis on mental health. Health impacts were often complex and cross-sectoral in nature indicating the need for a management approach across several sectors that targets drought and health in risk assessment and adaptation planning processes. Two recurring themes in the UK narratives were the health consequences of drought for ‘at-risk’ groups and the need to target them, and that drought in a changing climate presented potential health implications for at-risk groups. Keywords Drought . Health . Narratives . Mental health . Outdoor recreation . At-risk . Climate change
* Tim Taylor [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Climatic Change
1 Introduction The existing literature on drought and health focuses largely on developing country contexts (Stanke et al. 2013). Similar studies are starting to emerge in developed countries (Vins et al. 2015; Vos 2017), but there remain limited empirical findings and understanding about relationships between drought and health in these countries. In the context of findings which show implications for human health from extreme weather events due to climate change (IPCC 2015), and that increased drought risk under climate change has implications for at-risk individuals, communities and health systems (Ebi and Bowen 2016), the threat of climate change further compounds the need for addressing this gap in understanding in developed countries. This paper presents findings from the Drought Risk and You (DRY) project, which is concerned with evidence to support better dr
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