An Australian glossary to aid multisectoral research and collaborations to address health and climate change

A shared language will promote climate change and health research and underpin a sustainable future

Climate change requires collective action across many government, non‐government and private sectors.1 The development of a shared terminology to conduct, share and use research will be critical to the effective communication and collaboration needed to achieve this collective action.2 At the same time, climate change mitigation and adaptation is an exponentially growing field of multidisciplinary research and practice, augmenting the scale of the challenge.3,4 It will be vital that this cross‐disciplinary research effort is supported, but currently, there is poor alignment in the use of relevant terms across different research and policy fields, with little standardisation of terminology in the national and international literature.

This article builds on other international efforts to address the need for shared terminology. A 2018 article provides definitions for the fields linking human health to ecosystems and environments and highlights planetary health.5 Another publication defines key terms that focus on vulnerability assessments and health equity implications.6 Leading international organisations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)7 and the World Health Organization,8 have developed glossaries relevant to climate change and health. However, many terms require refinement for the Australian context.

In an Australian collaborative endeavour, we developed an Australia-specific glossary of 55 terms that we believe are key to enhancing local intersectoral communication and collaboration on climate change and health.9 The methods included a systematic search and review of existing glossaries relevant to climate change and health, plus three rounds of stakeholder engagement including an online survey, a workshop and further discussion via a shared online document (Supporting Information). The glossary’s target audiences are researchers from various disciplines needing to collaborate to address health and climate change, and partners who need to understand and use that research to drive change (eg, government, policy, private sector, and otherdecision makers). We acknowledge that the language and priority issues in health and climate change will continue to evolve, and welcome contributions from other stakeholders to further develop and refine the terminology in the glossary.

The need for multidisciplinary collaboration on health and climate change issues in Australia is reflected in the recent National Health and Medical Research Council’s Special Initiative in Human Health and Environmental Change.10 This initiative will support a multidisciplinary, collaborative network of researchers across Australia. It is hoped that this glossary could assist multisectoral collaborations.

Key terms

This section outlines and discusses some of the essential principles, considerations and challenges identified in developing the glossary and illustrates these with some of the most debated key terms. Notably, several definitions integrated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives. We included the term “Indigenous knowledges” for its Australian relevance and its importance in sustaining and caring for the land on which we live. Furthermore, we applied an eco‐social interpretation of health and climate change relationships, recognising that human and environmental health are inextricably linked. We amended several pre‐existing definitions to include considerations of other sentient beings and ecosystems.

Components of climate change

Challenges in defining climate‐related terms are illustrated by the definitions of climate change from the IPCC and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).7,11 Despite both being derived for United Nations processes, there are stark differences. Both refer to two components of the changing climate: anthropogenic climate change (human component) and natural variability in the Earth’s climate. While the IPCC distinguishes between these in their climate change definition, the UNFCCC has split them into separate terms: “climate change” (anthropogenic causes) and “climate variability” (natural causes). Our stakeholders recommended distinguishing between the two components and explicitly stating the existential threat of climate change to create a greater sense of urgency, and also chose “health emergency” to urge immediate action as many Australian health and medical professional organisations (eg, the Australian Medical Association12 and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians13) have declared climate change a health emergency.

Equity and justice

Previous definitions for “climate equity” and “climate justice” appear to be human‐centric. Our proposed definitions for climate justice and climate equity are broader, to capture the links between human health and other species and ecological systems. In Australia, the destruction of biodiversity, wetlands, mangrove swamps, and rainforests is an indiscriminate loss of sensitive ecological systems and a form of injustice. There is an even more expansive notion of climate justice which includes attention to inequity in impacts, to participation and procedural justice, and to the functioning and provision of basic needs of vulnerable communities.14

Related to climate justice is “just transition”. A policy report by the Australian Council of Trade Unions15 notes that a just transition should ensure that communities facing transitions can flourish rather than simply survive. We amended a pre‐existing definition to explicitly state that transition should be towards sustainable economic systems that promote social justice. It is also important to acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives for just transitions, and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples be at the centre of decision making to ensure that environmental stewardship is promoted.16

Anxiety, grief and solastalgia

Climate change is adversely affecting mental health, with visible impacts and increasing trauma from extreme weather events (eg, Australia’s unprecedented 2019–20 bushfire season). Terms that acknowledge and highlight the psychosocial and emotional harms of climate change include “climate anxiety/grief” and “solastalgia”, coined by Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht.17 This is especially relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.18 Our climate anxiety/grief definition explicitly states the anxiety felt around losses for future generations. We also recognise that different generations may have varying baselines for how they think of climate change.

Fires

There are many variations in terminology used around fires, particularly international definitions, which may cause misunderstanding and inappropriate use of some terms in the context of climate change. In Australia, the term “bushfire” is very widely used and is therefore the term included in our glossary. The management of fires in Australia involves burning, often referred to as “hazard reduction burning”, which itself carries fire‐related health risks and consequences.

In Australia, “cultural burning” describes burning practices developed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to enhance the health of the land and its people.19 A commonly confused fire‐related term is “fire disasters”, which is often misused when discussing fires in Australia integral to ecosystem functioning and not classified as disasters; for example, annual savanna fires, which are part of the seasonal cycle of those ecosystems involved. A bushfire is classified as a disaster when it is uncontrollable and adversely affects lives, properties or the environment.

Heat

In Australia, extreme heat events have claimed more lives than all other extreme weather events combined.20 Many ways of defining “heatwave” exist in global and Australian contexts, with variations across sectors and regions. It is generally agreed that heatwaves are prolonged periods of excessive heat, with “prolonged” usually defined as multiple consecutive days and “excessive” being the exceedance of an extreme threshold. Our stakeholders decided to include a detailed definition from the Bureau of Meteorology21 which also considers overnight temperatures. High night‐time temperatures affect health and wellbeing by limiting respite from heat and reducing sleep quality, with relevance for a health‐focused glossary.

Responses

Actions, strategies and interventions to address the health impacts of climate change fall into either adaptation or mitigation categories.6 Mitigation aims to reduce the human contribution to climate change, and adaptation is a process or strategy to manage the inevitable changes that are already beginning to occur.7 The IPCC definition of maladaptation was selected and adapted for our glossary because it allows for flexible interpretations across sectors. Our version of the IPCC definition recognises that “maladaptation” refers to the situation where an adaptation strategy causes unintended consequences. For example, one proposed strategy for bushfires is to remove bush, but this was based on a flawed argument that less bush equates to fewer bushfires. The resulting loss of biodiversity from this strategy would be an unintended consequence and thus a maladaptation.

Resilience

Although not commonly used in Australia at present, the term “climate resilience” is widely used internationally and has growing relevance here. Climate resilience in the Australian context involves considering how communities have responded to and recovered from past natural disasters to improve their resilience for future events. Hence, our glossary’s definition builds on the IPCC’s definition to focus on strengthening for future events7 and explicitly mentions political and governance systems’ capacity to cope with future perilous events.

Indigenous knowledges

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and IPCC definitions of Indigenous knowledges7,22 refer broadly to all First Nations peoples’ knowledge systems. We could not identify an existing definition of Indigenous knowledges for the Australian context, an important topic for further development. When referring to Indigenous knowledges in Australia, it is appropriate to refer to these knowledge systems as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges.23 The international definition also lacks the important spiritual and cultural aspects of Indigenous knowledges and the fact that these knowledge systems have been passed down over many thousands of years and underpin Indigenous peoples’ understandings today. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges include an intricate understanding and connection to Country, developed over thousands of years to care for the environment sustainably. Caring for Country, which embodies set stewardship values for land and sea environments, describes these sustainable land management practices, as well as being a key aspect in the continuation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.19

Conclusion

The glossary is now publicly available. We hope that policymakers, researchers and stakeholders from different sectors will refer to the glossary to facilitate their discussions and help translate research into policies and practices. Given that language is continuously evolving, as are health and climate change issues, we acknowledge the limitations in the perspectives presented in the glossary and invite contributions from various stakeholders to make this glossary a dynamic and useful tool. By doing this, we can build a shared language to underpin a just transition to a sustainable future for our country.