COP29: Health Community Slams Proposed Climate Finance Deal

Baku, November 22, 2024:- Reacting to the latest proposed COP29 agreement on climate finance - published on Friday afternoon, the Global Climate and Health Alliance called on national delegations to urgently work for a deal that protects people’s health and wellbeing before the climate summit ends. 

“If COP29 agrees on the text shown to us today, it would sign a death sentence for millions", said Jess Beagley, Policy Lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance, a consortium of more than 200 health professional and health civil society organisations from around the world. “Such a deal would be a bad deal not just for developing countries already under pressure from the climate crisis, but for the entire world."

“Before COP29 closes, negotiators must come up with a near term, concrete commitment at a scale commensurate with the health threats already faced by communities, based on grants from wealthy countries”, added Beagley. “The current text leaves the doors wide open to loans and private sector finance, which risk locking developing countries into further cycles of debt, poverty and disease. While human lives hang in the balance, COP29 risks offering fossil fuel companies a get out of jail free card, with references to fossil fuel subsidies and the obligation of polluters to pay removed from the text.” 

“The latest COP29 climate finance proposal makes a mockery of the UNFCCC process that should not only address the legitimate needs of developing countries, but also drive home the legitimate responsibilities of wealthy, developed nations”, said Dr Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “Many of the countries most impacted by climate change are already paying more to service their international loans than the combined budgets for their health systems and education, with devastating impacts on people’s health and wellbeing. It is unconscionable that wealthy countries are proposing a climate finance deal that could worsen the debt burden of countries facing the brunt of a climate crisis they did not cause.”

“As people around the world experience first hand the devastating impacts of heat, storms, floods, and droughts, the failure of developed countries to step up to their responsibilities is completely unacceptable, not to mention profoundly shortsighted”, added Miller. “COP29 negotiators have got to go back into the negotiating rooms and fix this, in the remaining hours of this summit. The people of the world, and their health care providers, are watching, and lives are at stake.”

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.
Find out more: https://climateandhealthalliance.org/about/

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