Climate Week: Clock Ticking For Governments To Make Strides On Health Ahead Of COP29

September 24, 2024:- As Climate Week takes place in New York, the Global Climate and Health Alliance called on governments to urgently raise their ambition ahead of November’s COP29 climate summit in Baku by taking transformative climate action sufficient to protect people’s health. For the first time, Climate Week, which brings together senior international figures from business, government, civil society and the climate sector, includes health as one of its themes.

This year, two billion people - 25% of the world’s population - have experienced at least 30 days of heat that put their health at risk. Climate-exacerbated floods have hit Europe, the US, and have affected four million people in Central and Western Africa, displacing close to one million people, and leaving 1000 dead. The human impacts of climate change, caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, are major and growing”, said Dr Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “What we need to see now is action and cooperation to ensure that these causes of climate change are urgently addressed, and that hard-hit communities and countries have the resources they need to care for their people.”

“Fossil fuels are the leading driver of climate change and its associated health impacts, and in addition, present a major hazard to health by polluting the air, water and soil,from extraction, transport, processing and combustion”, said Miller. “At COP28, governments called for a transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems - a commitment reiterated this week in the Pact for the Future. During COP29 governments must go further by committing to no new fossil fuel infrastructure, and must develop concrete plans and timelines for delivering a just phase-out and transition to renewable energy”.

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With the COP28 Declaration, over 150 national governments recognised many of the critical intersections of climate change and health”, said Miller. “Now they must demonstrate what they are doing about it, by reporting on the real action they are taking to protect people’s health – including, coordinated action across sectors, additional finance to address the impacts of climate change, and making health a fundamental measure of our progress and success on climate action.”

Parties to the Paris Agreement are due to present the third iterations of their national climate action plans, called “Nationally Determined Contributions” by February 2025. While the majority of NDCs mention health, far fewer describe healthy climate action, include costings and budgets to support these actions, or define targets to report on progress. NDCs 3.0 must address these aspects to adequately protect people and our planet.

“By COP29, governments will be midway through a two-year process, as part of work under the Global Goal on Adaptation, to set clear indicators for measuring how well countries are adapting to climate change, including how well people’s health is being protected in the face of climate impacts”, said Jess Beagley, Policy Lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “In Baku, governments must agree on the process that will ensure robust health metrics are defined next year at COP30.

“The decision at COP29 which will ultimately determine the success of the conference will be the adoption of a new climate finance target”, said Beagley. “Governments must agree to an ambitious updated climate finance commitment, the New Collective Quantified Goal. This must be in the order of trillions, based on grants, not loans, and respond to the needs of developing countries across adaptation, loss and damage and mitigation”.

About GCHA
The Global Climate and Health Alliance is a consortium of more than 200 health professional and health civil society organisations and networks from around the world addressing climate change. We are united by a shared vision of an equitable, sustainable future, in which the health impacts of climate change are minimised, and the health co-benefits of climate change mitigation are maximised.

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