Health as the Frontline of Climate Adaptation
Poverty, climate vulnerability, and public health are deeply intertwined. We have long known that illness can trap families in a debt trap and intergenerational poverty because of out-of-pocket health expenditures. But climate change is multiplying these risks. Smallholder farmers, informal workers, tribal communities, and migrants, already on the margins, now face cascading challenges. A family facing a climate-induced flood or drought might lose not just income, but access to food, shelter, and healthcare. Climate shocks are making people both sicker and poorer, and we need to respond with more urgency and context-appropriate solutions.
The Health Impacts of a Changing Climate
Extreme weather events, erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and deteriorating air quality are already translating into real, measurable health impacts. In 2022, the Lancet Countdown reported a 68% increase in heat-related deaths among vulnerable populations globally compared to the 2000–2004 baseline. Displacement due to floods or droughts exposes communities to new pathogens, worsens malnutrition, and severs access to healthcare. These are not future risks, they’re unfolding now and disproportionately affecting those with the fewest resources.
Climate volatility is also disrupting disease ecology. We are witnessing the expansion of vector-borne diseases, such as dengue, into new geographies and changes in seasonality that complicate diagnosis and strain our preparedness. For example, the Indian Council of Medical Research has noted dengue outbreaks outside traditional monsoon months, creating new public health blind spots. Climate-induced migration can also strip people of their existing safety nets and expose them to new healthcare challenges.
Beyond Sickness: The Mental and Nutritional Toll
The toll is not just physical. Climate change is a growing mental health crisis. Climate anxiety is rising, especially among the youth. A 2021 Lancet study surveying 10,000 youths across 10 countries found that 59% were apprehensive about climate change, with many reporting feelings of sadness, helplessness, and even reluctance to have children. Climate change itself is a depressing thought, and while we don’t have quantifiable data, climate-induced anxiety, trauma, and long-term stress are bound to rise.
Nutrition security is also at risk. For smallholder families, food and milk often come from their own land and livestock. When climate change reduces crop yields or dairy productivity, children’s nutrition suffers. In countries where stunting in children under five is a matter of deep concern, even modest shocks to local food systems can undo years of progress.
From Response to Resilience
We cannot continue to treat healthcare as a reactive system—waiting for people to fall sick and then responding. We need to invest in health adaptation: understanding how climate variables, such as heat, pollution, flooding, and water scarcity, drive health outcomes, and proactively building resilience. This means supporting innovations that go beyond diagnostics and therapeutics. We need surveillance systems for disease-causing organisms and the ability to predict disease outbreaks. We need innovations that help us strengthen decentralised healthcare, deploy screening tools to enable early referrals, and empower frontline workers through technology. We have to build climate-resilient health infrastructure (e.g., solar-powered clinics, heat-proof buildings).
We have seen what’s possible. For example, Selco Foundation has implemented clean energy solutions in healthcare infrastructure in Meghalaya, reducing dependence on unreliable grids. Sustain Plus and Social Alpha have extensively worked on building climate resilience and adaptation. We must also think about heat-resistant building materials and climate-resilient crops. Health, nutrition, infrastructure, and climate adaptation must be addressed in an integrated way.
The Innovation Pipeline is Broken
Despite the urgency, the climate-health innovation space is chronically underfunded. Healthcare is underfunded. Climate adaptation is underfunded. And at their intersection, capital is nearly absent. Venture capital typically avoids these areas due to their long gestation periods and unclear exits. The government is the primary funder in these critical areas; however, public finance has limitations in developing countries, where numerous competing priorities for development exist. This leaves philanthropy and catalytic capital to bridge the gap, validating early-stage solutions, supporting translational research and development, and nurturing the innovation ecosystem. But today, most academic and research institutions lack the support to prioritise this agenda. Without clear signals of intent and funding, the best ideas remain in labs. We need mechanisms that take innovations from lab to market to deployment readiness—what Social Alpha calls the “missing middle.” That’s where we must intervene, identifying innovations and getting them deployment-ready.
We cannot rely only on academic institutions to push this agenda. If they don’t see support, they won’t prioritise this work. We must demonstrate that there is intent, capital, and demand for climate-health innovations.
Health Is the Gateway
Health must become the starting point for climate action. Climate change is a slow-burning crisis, but health is immediate, personal, and politically salient. When we frame climate risk through the lens of health, we unlock empathy, urgency, and policy traction.
We also need to move from jargon to action. Terms like “One Health” are helpful frameworks, but too often, resources are spent on panel discussions and mundane research rather than breakthrough innovation and systemic changes. Reports replace readiness. What we need now is investment in implementation – develop, de-risk and deploy innovations.
We Can’t Afford to Wait
Climate change is no longer tomorrow’s problem. Its health impacts are already shaping today’s inequalities. A child exposed to air pollution in the womb, a farmer displaced by drought, a migrant worker living in pathogen-infested habitats, a teenager overwhelmed by eco-anxiety—these are not abstractions. They are real, and they are multiplying.
We must act. We need an ecosystem that enables innovation to anticipate, adapt, and protect not just those already affected, but also future generations.
About the Author:
Manoj Kumar is the Founder of Social Alpha, a multistage innovation curation and venture development platform for start-ups that aim to solve the most critical social, economic and environmental challenges.
Manoj’s three-decade-long career has included roles as an entrepreneur, investor, and corporate leader spanning multiple sectors and geographies. Recognising the need for an enabling ecosystem to support and nurture impactful innovations in their lab to market transition, Manoj founded Social Alpha in 2016. Social Alpha works closely with innovators willing to take entrepreneurial risks to solve humanity’s most critical challenges by helping them develop and deploy solutions for people and the planet. Since its inception, Social Alpha has supported over 300 innovations, focusing on Climate Change, Healthcare, Poverty and Livelihoods and has unlocked over US$350 million from philanthropy, governments and investors.
Manoj contributes his experience to the boards of multiple companies and non-profits, including his role as a founding trustee of the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society. Manoj is deeply passionate about creating entrepreneurial solutions to societal problems by bridging the gap between science and society and hopes Social Alpha architecture can continue to evolve to address market failure and associated challenges in bridging those gaps.
An alumnus of Harvard Business School, Manoj is based in Bangalore, where he continues his work with Social Alpha, dedicated to supporting sustainable and scalable solutions for social impact.