Global Perspectives on the Impact of Climate Change on Quality of Life

Significance Of Quality Of Life (Qol) In The Face Of Climate Change

World Health Organization (WHO) defines QoL as “an individual’s perceptions of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems where they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards, and concerns” (Veenhoven, 2000; Yusoff, 2020). The term Quality of Life (QoL) encompasses a wide range of factors, including an individual's physical and mental health, degree of independence, social connections, personal beliefs, and their associations with prominent environmental elements (Andrews, 1974; Bowling, 1995; Costanza et al., 2007; Estoque et al., 2019; Theofilou, 2013). The conceptual development of QoL definitions takes into account all multidimensional features of a social-ecological system, including both objective and subjective metrics (Costanza et al., 2007; Estoque et al., 2022; Estoque and Wu, 2024).

The seventeen (17) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which focus on partnerships for the goals, life below water, life on land, good health and well-being, climate action and several others, have underscored the significance of QoL. Comparable recent studies have examined urban transitions while concentrating on Urban Quality of Life, or UQoL. Urban quality of life (UQoL) is the ratio of land usage to land cover (Yadav & Gupta, 2021). Climate variations are not explicitly included in UQoL, and there is disagreement about which components may be broadly used to address all of the SDGs. It has been established that climate change has detrimental effects on natural ecosystems, and maybe more significantly, on people's physical and mental health because of rising temperatures, droughts, floods, and storms thus resulting in an overall diminished QoL (Bhatti, 2017). Therefore, QoL is gaining attention in the context of issues pertaining to climate change and variability.