Klima og helseforskning: hvordan er fokuset på distrikt og urfolk?

14.02.2013

Hvis klimaendinger er vårt århundres største utfordring for folkehelsen globalt, trengs relevant forskning. En forsker fra Tasmania har sett på medisinsk og sosiologisk litteratur i perioden 1995 - 2012, totalt 19.164 abstracts. Hun finner at både distrikt og urfolk har vært realtivt lite omtalt og reiser blandt annet spørsmål om det er valg av tema eller valg av forskningsmetode som gir dette utslaget

Climate change and health research: has it served rural communities?
Bell EJ. Rural and Remote Health Journal , Febr 2013

ConclusionThis study highlights the ways in which evidence available for best practice is shaped by the ways research is conceptualised. Future community-based research in climate change should also be informed by critical examination of the ways in which applied research also contains implicit assumptions that shape what adaptive strategies may be developed. Approaches to gathering evidence for adaptation shaped by ‘vulnerability’ or ‘resilience’ or ‘opportunity’ conceptualisations of adaptation could deliver quite different kinds of evidence in the same communities. This study suggests the importance of better development and use of evidence-based theory about adaptation best practice in climate and health literature generally.

Ultimately, this study suggests there is a need to question the perception that climate change research involves ‘hard’ climate science or sophisticated quantitative scenarios modelling removed from the traditional applied community-based research contexts of rural health. Changing this perception, including among rural stakeholders and researchers who have arguably been slow to participate in programs of climate change research, is important for rural health. It may ultimately be about building confidence that community-based research does have value in the sciences needed to make a difference in a climate-changing world.