t the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP27), negotiators had an opportunity to spearhead conversations on public health resilience and mitigation ambition–both being fundamental ingredients for success in what is known as ‘Planetary Health’. Yet despite extensive talks on climate finance and implementation, this opportunity was squandered as, in the words of European MEP Peter Liese, “health, unfortunately, was not a big issue.” Incorporating “health talk” in the agenda of climate conferences emerges as the only way forward to prevent paying the price of institutional delay in addressing this policy issue–a price that will run in the billions of healthcare dollars but, more importantly, human lives.
COPs Remain Weak on Intersecting Climate, Health
The Egyptian COP epitomized an historically inconsistent and weak approach of COP talks on the topic of climate and health. UNFCCC Conferences have had a clear mandate to engage with climate-related health hazards, as the Framework Convention itself includes the disposition for Parties to minimize the adverse effects on public health in their climate change considerations (Article 4.f).
However, this mandate has been insufficiently fulfilled by Parties throughout the years, the health community being a late-comer to the negotiating table. The international community saw the first UNFCCC-sponsored summit on climate and health coming to life only at COP17, where the first tangible set of health-related recommendations to climate negotiators was published. Despite repeated calls from a joint UNFCCC-WHO panel to “step up” efforts to incorporate health considerations in climate agreements, meaningful progress was limited until COP26. The Glasgow-based summit indeed featured the establishment of an Health Programme aimed at galvanizing multi-stakeholder health action, with multiple ministries committing to concrete climate action in the health sector.
COP27 interrupted the path of emergence of health talks at the UNFCCC by not featuring the policy among the core eleven themes of the Egyptian Conference. The World Health Organization (WHO), for one, participated in the negotiations as UN Observer and only in a supporting capacity, with clear spill-over effects for policy advancements on planetary health. As a recent WHO study indicates, to date “no UNFCCC decision [...] explicitly recognizes in its principles that stabilization and reduction of greenhouse gases will promote positive health outcomes for people and the planet.”
Although some optimism for progress at COP28 lingers, the current climate governance system clearly features structural shortcomings that are allowing Parties to backslide in addressing climate-related health issues at the scale and pace needed. “In current form, the UNFCCC is fighting a losing battle and spending public money over holding grand meetings that don’t yield results, essentially because they don't address climate change as a global health emergency,” commented Dr. Edmond Fernandez, Founder and CEO of the CHD Group.
Considering that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) first warned of climate-related impacts on human health as early as in 1990, the global healthcare community too has its responsibility for the institutional delay in addressing climate-related health issues. Despite having a sizable carbon footprint equivalent to over 4% of net global emissions, the health sector started to engage only recently with decarbonization commitments, and experts believe that – in turn – its climate inaction to date reflects poorly on the sector’s credibility to table proposals at climate conferences.
Global Mitigation Strategy Wanted
While these conferences have been taking place for over three decades, the lack of an effective global mitigation strategy is already burdening human health worldwide. The latest IPCC report estimates indeed indicate that the forecasted climate change resulting from current policies will cause some 250,000 yearly additional deaths per year by 2050, whilst less conservative scenarios project more than 9 million additional yearly deaths by the end of the century. Beyond mortality, the current evidence-base in fact indicates that the already present climate change-related events will further degrade both physical and psychological health worldwide, especially in more susceptible communities “including indigenous peoples, [...] emergency responders, women and minority groups.”
Backsliding to coal due to the current energy crisis, paired with poor progress on halting fossil fuel proliferation at COP27, further calls for an international response to prevent a significant deterioration of climate-related health scenarios. Mitigation efforts remain beyond inadequate to prevent cataclysmal global warming as the carbon intensity of the energy sector has decreased by only 1% globally since the signing of the UNFCCC back in 1992, and 15 of the largest oil and gas companies are threatening to make the Paris Agreement goal to limit climate change to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels unattainable due to their current fossil fuel production strategy, a Lancet study found. Unfortunately, COP27 failed to counterbalance this trend by omitting any reference to fossil fuels or their phasedown in its Cover Decision, also missing out on the health co-benefit of reducing the 1.2 million yearly deaths arising from exposure to fossil fuel-derived air pollution (PM2.5) alone.
At the same time, the lack of conversations on climate finance for building resilience against climate-related events and diseases might–once again–increase mortality and morbidity among the most vulnerable groups, including children.
Inadequate funding and the long-term infrastructural effects of COVID-19 position the healthcare sector in a particularly vulnerable position to respond efficiently to these climate emergencies. Despite growing public and political engagement, “pace and scale of climate change adaptation, planning, and resilience is far from what is necessary to reduce the health impacts of climate change” especially considering insufficient funding to support climate health adaptation, according to the 2022 Lancet Countdown report.
The current inadequacy of climate health finance raises issues of intergenerational equity and Loss and Damage (L&D)–both prominent discussion items at the Egyptian COP. Most of the world’s 2.2 billion children are disproportionately affected by changes in their local environment, and the climate-caused flooding in Pakistan alone impacted over 16 million children–causing over 400 fatalities and limiting healthcare resources for affected infants. Furthermore, countries suffering from multidimensional poverty are reportedly overly-exposed to non-economic losses arising from climate change such as “wellbeing losses”, which for natural hazards are estimated to average between $350 and $500 billion per year. Current shortcomings in climate finance as presented at COP27 may impact the future welfare of countries and communities already experiencing economic hardships or health inequality, compounding their vulnerabilities.
Structural Reforms to Move Forward
Considering the current pace of UNFCCC-sponsored progress on climate health and the dangerous trajectories of healthcare adaptation efforts, a swift and structural reform of how climate-related health is addressed at climate conferences is urgently required.
On the one hand, establishing an integrated governance system on climate health could overcome backsliding and reluctance of future COP Presidencies to address the topic. The fact that 86% of current Nationally Determined Contributions now explicitly reference health indicates a growing political engagement with climate-related health, which could be capitalized by enabling multisectoral approaches and formally including a variety of healthcare stakeholders to inform UNFCCC negotiations. This approach would further align with the proposal to position the global health community to “rais[e] climate action front and center” and “integrate climate actions into its own agenda” as a result of increased public scrutiny thanks to the formal incorporation in UNFCCC processes.
On the other, by making climate-related health a standing item in the agenda of future COPs, progress on climate health would not only be publicly monitored, but also iteratively encouraged. The benefits of a structural ‘health’ item in UNFCCC proceedings synergistically align with climate policy aspirations as well as with WHO and IPCC recommendations. Making ‘Health’ a domain under which to evaluate the success of each Conference would encourage Parties to integrate health considerations with other policy developments.
For instance, Parties may consider promoting measures to minimize irreversible non-economic L&D and leverage existing platforms to strengthen responses to immediate and long-term climate-related health L&D, such as the Santiago Network and the Warsaw International Mechanism. Furthermore, health-related vulnerability and adaptation assessments might inform fundamental UNFCCC tools such as the Global Goal on Adaptation, NDCs and National Adaptation Plans–thus connecting evidence from IPCC and Parties’ observed vulnerabilities to policy practice in UNFCCC. “If we truly wish to bring climate action, we need to table global health as priority one on the climate mandate,” commented Dr. Edmond Fernandez.
The absence of “health talk” at COP27 despite promising premises to the conference, combined with the displayed hesitancy to halt fossil fuel proliferation, constitutes a material threat to both current and future generations’ welfare. Future COPs will necessarily need to catch up on health-centered efforts if the global population is not only to survive, but to thrive in the era of climate change.
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The Dangerous Absence of Health Talk at COP27
Photo by Ümit Yıldırım on Unsplash
March 3, 2023
Negotiators at COP27 failed to spearhead conversations on public health resilience, continuing a worrying trend of health not being much of an issue at climate talks. Failing to treat public health as part of the climate emergency will be expensive in dollars and lives, writes Giacomo Di Capua.
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t the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP27), negotiators had an opportunity to spearhead conversations on public health resilience and mitigation ambition–both being fundamental ingredients for success in what is known as ‘Planetary Health’. Yet despite extensive talks on climate finance and implementation, this opportunity was squandered as, in the words of European MEP Peter Liese, “health, unfortunately, was not a big issue.” Incorporating “health talk” in the agenda of climate conferences emerges as the only way forward to prevent paying the price of institutional delay in addressing this policy issue–a price that will run in the billions of healthcare dollars but, more importantly, human lives.
COPs Remain Weak on Intersecting Climate, Health
The Egyptian COP epitomized an historically inconsistent and weak approach of COP talks on the topic of climate and health. UNFCCC Conferences have had a clear mandate to engage with climate-related health hazards, as the Framework Convention itself includes the disposition for Parties to minimize the adverse effects on public health in their climate change considerations (Article 4.f).
However, this mandate has been insufficiently fulfilled by Parties throughout the years, the health community being a late-comer to the negotiating table. The international community saw the first UNFCCC-sponsored summit on climate and health coming to life only at COP17, where the first tangible set of health-related recommendations to climate negotiators was published. Despite repeated calls from a joint UNFCCC-WHO panel to “step up” efforts to incorporate health considerations in climate agreements, meaningful progress was limited until COP26. The Glasgow-based summit indeed featured the establishment of an Health Programme aimed at galvanizing multi-stakeholder health action, with multiple ministries committing to concrete climate action in the health sector.
COP27 interrupted the path of emergence of health talks at the UNFCCC by not featuring the policy among the core eleven themes of the Egyptian Conference. The World Health Organization (WHO), for one, participated in the negotiations as UN Observer and only in a supporting capacity, with clear spill-over effects for policy advancements on planetary health. As a recent WHO study indicates, to date “no UNFCCC decision [...] explicitly recognizes in its principles that stabilization and reduction of greenhouse gases will promote positive health outcomes for people and the planet.”
Although some optimism for progress at COP28 lingers, the current climate governance system clearly features structural shortcomings that are allowing Parties to backslide in addressing climate-related health issues at the scale and pace needed. “In current form, the UNFCCC is fighting a losing battle and spending public money over holding grand meetings that don’t yield results, essentially because they don't address climate change as a global health emergency,” commented Dr. Edmond Fernandez, Founder and CEO of the CHD Group.
Considering that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) first warned of climate-related impacts on human health as early as in 1990, the global healthcare community too has its responsibility for the institutional delay in addressing climate-related health issues. Despite having a sizable carbon footprint equivalent to over 4% of net global emissions, the health sector started to engage only recently with decarbonization commitments, and experts believe that – in turn – its climate inaction to date reflects poorly on the sector’s credibility to table proposals at climate conferences.
Global Mitigation Strategy Wanted
While these conferences have been taking place for over three decades, the lack of an effective global mitigation strategy is already burdening human health worldwide. The latest IPCC report estimates indeed indicate that the forecasted climate change resulting from current policies will cause some 250,000 yearly additional deaths per year by 2050, whilst less conservative scenarios project more than 9 million additional yearly deaths by the end of the century. Beyond mortality, the current evidence-base in fact indicates that the already present climate change-related events will further degrade both physical and psychological health worldwide, especially in more susceptible communities “including indigenous peoples, [...] emergency responders, women and minority groups.”
Backsliding to coal due to the current energy crisis, paired with poor progress on halting fossil fuel proliferation at COP27, further calls for an international response to prevent a significant deterioration of climate-related health scenarios. Mitigation efforts remain beyond inadequate to prevent cataclysmal global warming as the carbon intensity of the energy sector has decreased by only 1% globally since the signing of the UNFCCC back in 1992, and 15 of the largest oil and gas companies are threatening to make the Paris Agreement goal to limit climate change to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels unattainable due to their current fossil fuel production strategy, a Lancet study found. Unfortunately, COP27 failed to counterbalance this trend by omitting any reference to fossil fuels or their phasedown in its Cover Decision, also missing out on the health co-benefit of reducing the 1.2 million yearly deaths arising from exposure to fossil fuel-derived air pollution (PM2.5) alone.
At the same time, the lack of conversations on climate finance for building resilience against climate-related events and diseases might–once again–increase mortality and morbidity among the most vulnerable groups, including children.
Inadequate funding and the long-term infrastructural effects of COVID-19 position the healthcare sector in a particularly vulnerable position to respond efficiently to these climate emergencies. Despite growing public and political engagement, “pace and scale of climate change adaptation, planning, and resilience is far from what is necessary to reduce the health impacts of climate change” especially considering insufficient funding to support climate health adaptation, according to the 2022 Lancet Countdown report.
The current inadequacy of climate health finance raises issues of intergenerational equity and Loss and Damage (L&D)–both prominent discussion items at the Egyptian COP. Most of the world’s 2.2 billion children are disproportionately affected by changes in their local environment, and the climate-caused flooding in Pakistan alone impacted over 16 million children–causing over 400 fatalities and limiting healthcare resources for affected infants. Furthermore, countries suffering from multidimensional poverty are reportedly overly-exposed to non-economic losses arising from climate change such as “wellbeing losses”, which for natural hazards are estimated to average between $350 and $500 billion per year. Current shortcomings in climate finance as presented at COP27 may impact the future welfare of countries and communities already experiencing economic hardships or health inequality, compounding their vulnerabilities.
Structural Reforms to Move Forward
Considering the current pace of UNFCCC-sponsored progress on climate health and the dangerous trajectories of healthcare adaptation efforts, a swift and structural reform of how climate-related health is addressed at climate conferences is urgently required.
On the one hand, establishing an integrated governance system on climate health could overcome backsliding and reluctance of future COP Presidencies to address the topic. The fact that 86% of current Nationally Determined Contributions now explicitly reference health indicates a growing political engagement with climate-related health, which could be capitalized by enabling multisectoral approaches and formally including a variety of healthcare stakeholders to inform UNFCCC negotiations. This approach would further align with the proposal to position the global health community to “rais[e] climate action front and center” and “integrate climate actions into its own agenda” as a result of increased public scrutiny thanks to the formal incorporation in UNFCCC processes.
On the other, by making climate-related health a standing item in the agenda of future COPs, progress on climate health would not only be publicly monitored, but also iteratively encouraged. The benefits of a structural ‘health’ item in UNFCCC proceedings synergistically align with climate policy aspirations as well as with WHO and IPCC recommendations. Making ‘Health’ a domain under which to evaluate the success of each Conference would encourage Parties to integrate health considerations with other policy developments.
For instance, Parties may consider promoting measures to minimize irreversible non-economic L&D and leverage existing platforms to strengthen responses to immediate and long-term climate-related health L&D, such as the Santiago Network and the Warsaw International Mechanism. Furthermore, health-related vulnerability and adaptation assessments might inform fundamental UNFCCC tools such as the Global Goal on Adaptation, NDCs and National Adaptation Plans–thus connecting evidence from IPCC and Parties’ observed vulnerabilities to policy practice in UNFCCC. “If we truly wish to bring climate action, we need to table global health as priority one on the climate mandate,” commented Dr. Edmond Fernandez.
The absence of “health talk” at COP27 despite promising premises to the conference, combined with the displayed hesitancy to halt fossil fuel proliferation, constitutes a material threat to both current and future generations’ welfare. Future COPs will necessarily need to catch up on health-centered efforts if the global population is not only to survive, but to thrive in the era of climate change.
