Over the past century, public health measures such as vaccination, sanitation, water treatment and waste management have improved the lives of many million people across the world. However, this humanitarian progress is now seriously threated by anthropogenic global warming, which is likely to increase the planetary surface temperature by more than 4°C till the end of this century under a business-as-usual scenario. The physiological, economic and sociocultural impacts of such an envi-ronmental shock would be devastating for many societies, most notably for the highly vulnerable populations in the low-income countries.