The 2024 UN Climate Change Conference, known as COP29, recently wrapped up in Baku, Azerbaijan, with delegates agreeing to a $300 billion deal to support developing nations navigating the climate crisis. The summit, which ran into overtime on Sunday as tensions mounted, represented an ambitious effort to develop an expansive finance package capable of addressing escalating climate challenges.
However, amid the pivotal climate finance discussions, another critical issue also gained traction at the conference: the impacts of climate change on human health.
In a year marked by climate change-driven disasters, including hurricanes that ravaged the American Southeast and extreme heat that enveloped the Middle East, the climate crisis has exacted a visible toll on health outcomes. This summer, which saw the hottest day on record in terms of daily global average temperature, raised the risk for heat-related illnesses. Last month in Spain, flash floods led to at least 219 deaths. A new survey study in The Lancet Planetary Health of nearly 16,000 young Americans found that 42.8% reported “an impact of climate change on self-reported mental health.”
Against the backdrop of this troubling reality, COP29 sought to imbue the climate talks with a health perspective. In a statement titled “The Health Argument for Climate Action,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, reminded delegates of the importance of fighting for climate action to protect health.
“We care about rising sea levels and temperatures because they take land and homes, they make our planet less habitable, they contribute to cardiovascular disease, and they fuel the spread of communicable diseases to new places,” Dr. Ghebreyesus said. “We care about extreme weather events because they take lives and livelihoods, and damage infrastructure; And we care about air pollution because it fills our lungs with poison. That’s why we say the climate crisis is a health crisis.”
COP29 wasn’t the first UN Climate Change Conference to explicitly call attention to this matter. At COP28 in Dubai last year, an inaugural “Health Day” convened high-level health stakeholders from across the world around the intersection of climate change and health. A climate-health ministerial, co-organized by the WHO, the COP28 Presidency and the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention, culminated in the passage of the COP28 UAE Declaration on Climate and Health, a “voluntary call to action” that acknowledged the health dimensions of the climate crisis and encouraged the pursuit of requisite measures.
COP29 built on these outcomes with numerous events that put public health on the agenda. At the UN Climate Change Pavilion, the Wellcome Trust hosted the panel “The Power of Health in Unlocking Climate Action” to a packed audience. At the COP29 Health Pavilion, events spanned diverse climate-health themes, including “Gender and Equity in Climate and Health,” “Advancing Climate Literacy to Shape Sustainable Healthcare” and “Aligning Food Systems, Nutrition and Climate Action.”
In addition, the WHO engaged in several public-facing efforts to urge the incorporation of health considerations into broader policy initiatives. The organization unveiled a detailed report, “Quality criteria for integrating health into Nationally Determined Contributions,” that provided guidance for countries to align their climate action plans, known as NDCs, with health priorities. NDCs must be reassessed every five years, and with the next deadline to do so approaching in 2025, the time is ripe for embedding health-related climate targets.
The WHO also updated their virtual course, “Climate Change Negotiations and Health,” available via the One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership. The educational program provided a primer on the negotiations process at COP29, including the ways that health topics fit into the contours of the summit’s wider proceedings.
As delegations shift their focus to prepare for COP30 in Brazil next year, the foundation laid by COP29 to advance dialogue and solutions around the intersection of climate change and health will be paramount.
