Carlson Colin J, Colwell Rita, Hossain Mohammad Sharif, Rahman Mohammed Mofizur, Robock Alan, Ryan Sadie J, Alam Mohammad Shafiul, Trisos Christopher H
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, 20057, USA.
Center for Global Health Science and Security, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, 20057, USA.
Nat Commun. 2022 Apr 20;13(1):2150. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-29613-w.
Solar geoengineering is often framed as a stopgap measure to decrease the magnitude, impacts, and injustice of climate change. However, the benefits or costs of geoengineering for human health are largely unknown. We project how geoengineering could impact malaria risk by comparing current transmission suitability and populations-at-risk under moderate and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5) with and without geoengineering. We show that if geoengineering deployment cools the tropics, it could help protect high elevation populations in eastern Africa from malaria encroachment, but could increase transmission in lowland sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia. Compared to extreme warming, we find that by 2070, geoengineering would nullify a projected reduction of nearly one billion people at risk of malaria. Our results indicate that geoengineering strategies designed to offset warming are not guaranteed to unilaterally improve health outcomes, and could produce regional trade-offs among Global South countries that are often excluded from geoengineering conversations.
太阳能地球工程通常被视为一种权宜之计，用以降低气候变化的规模、影响及不公平性。然而，地球工程对人类健康的益处或成本在很大程度上尚不清楚。我们通过比较在有和没有地球工程的情况下，中等和高温室气体排放情景（代表性浓度路径4.5和8.5）下当前的传播适宜性和高危人群，来预测地球工程如何影响疟疾风险。我们表明，如果地球工程的部署使热带地区降温，它可能有助于保护东非的高海拔人群免受疟疾侵袭，但可能会增加撒哈拉以南非洲低地和南亚的疟疾传播。与极端变暖相比，我们发现到2070年，地球工程将抵消预计近10亿疟疾高危人群的减少。我们的结果表明，旨在抵消变暖的地球工程策略并不能保证单方面改善健康结果，并且可能在经常被排除在地球工程讨论之外的全球南方国家之间产生区域权衡。
