Bavaria’s climate special representative: energy transition as a “big health project”

What will threaten us in the future is already foreseeable: heat, drought and floods in many parts of the world reveal that there is still a lot to be done to adapt to climate change. The IPCC report published on March 20 also urgently warns of this; UN Secretary-General António Guterres even calls it a “survival guide for humanity”. Experts around the world are urging their governments to act.

Bavaria may have already reacted: In February, Bavaria’s Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) appointed Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann “Special Representative for Climate, Resilience and Prevention”. In an interview with FOCUS online earth, she explains what this title is all about, what the biggest climate hazard for us Germans is – and what we can learn from France.

The biggest health hazard? “Heat”

FOCUS online Earth: Ms. Traidl-Hoffmann, your title is “Special Representative for Climate, Resilience and Prevention”. How exactly can one imagine this post? What is your day-to-day work like?

Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann: In my day-to-day work, I work closely with the Competence Center for Climate Resilience at the State Office for Health and Food Safety. There is a whole team in which we meet regularly and develop measures for climate resilience or prepare them with the State Working Group on Climate Change (LAGIK).

We build on that and try to address the biggest health threat first – which is the heat. For example, we are now in contact with the municipalities and clarifying what we can do to implement heat protection plans. We are also clarifying with hospitals what the heat protection plans are like there. The same applies to care facilities and heat protection must also be included in schools – always with a view to health in the course of climate change.

It’s not like I make specifications. Rather, I draw attention to the fact that we need these heat protection plans and support them from a scientific, medical point of view. Another key task of the special representative is to support Health Minister Holetschek and the competence center with regard to the scientific basis on the subject of climate resilience and prevention.

heat and circulatory problems a complex problem that you warn about. How about allergies?

Traidl-Hoffmann: This is a huge topic. Allergies are increasing due to climate change. And this both in terms of the number of people who suffer from an allergy and the increase in the severity of symptoms in existing allergies. We already have too many people who suffer from allergies anyway: 20, 30 percent of people in Germany suffer from an allergy and this is increasing. Children in particular are affected.

What does climate change have to do with it?

Traidl-Hoffmann: First, the pollen fly longer. There is hardly a day without pollen. Secondly, there are more pollen fly each day. Third: the pollen is more aggressive. The single pollen itself releases more of these substances that cause us an allergy. And last but not least, we also have new pollen, for example from ragweed. These are all environmental factors related to climate change that are causing us to have more allergies. Other factors are air pollution, microplastics or chemicals that make our skin more permeable to allergenic substances.

“The energy transition is a major health project”

Across from BR24 you had called for a networking of all policy departments according to the principle of “health in all policies”. What exactly does that mean and how do you intend to assert yourself with it?

Traidl-Hoffmann: „Health in All Policies” stands for the strategy of anchoring health in all policy areas. So it is a cross-sectoral policy approach that systematically considers the health impact of decisions. The aim is to create synergies and avoid harmful health effects in order to improve population health and promote health equity.

This strategy is based on the realization that a person’s health not only depends on medical factors, but is also influenced by social, economic and environmental conditions. Therefore, decisions in other policy areas such as education, transport or the environment must also be checked for their health effects. By integrating health into all policy fields, synergies can be used to promote the health of the population.

In principle, the energy transition in Germany can be viewed as a major health project. If we manage the energy turnaround in the direction of renewable energies, then we will of course have an extremely high health effect: because then there will be fewer pollutants in the air, for example. We have to get away from any pollutants and towards sustainable systems – keyword lignite. All this means that we stay healthy and get healthy. And this argument will hopefully lead to a higher motivation to think about health everywhere.

One of the biggest problems we will have to face in the future is how we can build more heat resilient cities. Cities like Munich or Halle, for example, have an enormous number of asphalted areas that radiate heat in summer and thus heat up the city even more. What can we do to make our cities heatproof?

Traidl-Hoffmann: That’s a big challenge. I don’t like to talk about problems, I talk about challenges and also opportunities. We have a huge opportunity, especially in urban planning. An obvious example: If we bring more trees into the city – and not ones that then cause more allergies, like birch – we can turn concrete deserts into oases, have better air in the cities and healthier people. Urban planning has to be completely rethought: We have to build houses in such a way that we can still live there in 30 or 40 years. But that is not done: It is said that it will cost more. But if we don’t do it now, it will cost us a lot more in ten years and ultimately our lives.

Mitigate climate change “at full throttle”.

Who else can we learn a lot about heat protection from?

Traidl-Hoffmann: We can still learn a lot from France. The French have a fantastic heat protection program, den Heat wave map, which was implemented after the hot summer of 2003. Because a lot of people died back then, it was a real shock event for the French, to which they reacted directly.

Speaking of overheating: You have also often warned that hospitals in particular will be more frequently affected by heat and will have to care for more patients affected by heat. How can medical facilities then prepare for prolonged periods of heat?

Traidl-Hoffmann: The first step is to create awareness of the problem here as well. We are currently developing a register for cases of illness and deaths in Bavaria, which also takes heat into account as an influencing factor. One of the first actions should be to designate a person to be responsible for heat protection in the facility. This should then also coordinate the creation of a specific heat protection plan, including training measures for the staff.

This also includes checking the temperature development in the patient rooms. In an interdisciplinary team, measures for medium and long-term adaptation with roof and facade greening, parks for recreation should be thought up. As you can see, heat protection only works across sectors.

You have already said several times that we have to “full throttle” to mitigate climate change because that is also an important lever to protect us. What exactly are you asking politicians to do?

Traidl-Hoffmann: We are so late now that we simply have to do both – adapt to climate change and take action to mitigate climate change. And here the energy transition is really a huge lever. I recommend that politicians communicate the energy transition as a health project. An energy transition, addressed internationally, will lead to mitigation of climate change. And very important: It is always criticized that we would lose our prosperity if we do “too much” climate protection. Fine, but what do we achieve if we say, “But we want five more years of prosperity”? Then chaos reigns, there is no more prosperity and we can no longer live on our planet.