Photo: screenshot from Al Jazeera’s 101 East Documentary “India on Fire: Facing the Climate Crisis”. Watch it here

JUNE 2022

June 2022 has broken a number of records with unprecedented weather extremes. And those climate crisis extremes disproportionately hit  people who are low-income, especially Black, Brown and Indigenous communities. Our lowest income communities also have the least access to resources to cope with the changes that the climate crisis brings — to relocate if they are in a place that is heavily impacted, to afford clean energy solutions like solar panels, or to pay for increased heating or cooling costs.

Among the implications of the findings of the most recent IPCC report is that we are unlikely to succeed in addressing climate change without addressing environmental justice and climate justice. The report found that we could end extreme poverty, and provide access to healthcare, energy and a decent standard of living in low emitting countries, without driving up greenhouse gas emissions. A just transition is central to addressing the climate crisis. That is why the international health community was disappointed with the outcome of the United Nations technical meetings on climate change in Bonn in June: representatives discussed for ten days, but failed to establish, plans to support the Global South in adapting and responding to the impacts of the planetary crisis—months after developing countries demanded aid at the United Nations Climate Negotiations in Scotland.

Climate impacts have been getting worse globally, with the most marginalized communities paying a high price, and developed, high-income countries continuing to ignore their climate debt and failing to provide finance for loss and damage - funding, for example, to repair a flooded hospital, provide shelter and services for people displaced by an extreme storm, or to provide food assistance to communities facing famine because of crop losses due to drought. It is unconscionable that developed countries continue to kick the issue of loss and damage down the road—first at COP26, now in Bonn.

European countries present at the Bonn conference have stalled discussions about loss and damage funding, all the while actively looking for fossil fuel alternatives for themselves to replace gas shipments from Russia, which were largely discontinued after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine earlier this year.

While G7 Leaders committed to keep a limit of 1.5 °C temperature rise within reach, and acknowledged “the key role of the health sector in climate adaptation”, the outcome of the recent G7 meeting also failed to make progress on funding for loss and damage.

Addressing climate justice to ensure health equity requires recognizing that the climate crisis disproportionately affects Global South and marginalized and low income communities, and will continue to do so with increasing intensity unless concrete action is taken now. We need concrete commitments to funding global action for adaptation and loss and damage when governments head to Egypt later this year.

NEWS IN BRIEF

~ On Friday July 1st, England enacted its Health Care Act 2022 and, for the first time, codified in legislation the National Health Service’s “duties in relation to climate change”. Provisions include a requirement to contribute to meeting the UK’s net zero target, and adapting to predicted impacts of climate change.

~Members of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change wrote to MPs urging them to attend an important briefing on climate change to ensure they are equipped to make informed decisions for the benefit of constituents, for public health and for the national UK health service.

~The city of London endorsed the Fossil Fuel Treaty, becoming the largest city to join the call for a global just transition to move away from the fossil fuel system.

~The natural gas delivered to homes for cooking contains low concentrations of several chemicals linked to cancer, a new study found. The study adds to a growing body of research that links the delivery and use of natural gas to detrimental consequences for public health and the climate.

~ The combustion of fossil fuels is the major source of both air pollution and the greenhouse-gas emissions driving climate change, and the fetus, infant, and child are especially vulnerable to exposure to air pollution and climate change, according to a new study. All children are at risk, but the greatest burden falls on those who are socially and economically disadvantaged.

~ A Lancet Planetary Health update to a previous report indicates how environmental pollution is the single largest cause of disease and death in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and is strongly linked to poverty, but pollution controls are feasible, cost-effective and replicable.

~ A new study examined the relationship between extreme-heat events and cardiovascular mortality and found that the hottest days can indeed be deadly.

~The largest scientific review of its kind to date found growing confidence in the links between several adverse health effects and traffic related air pollution. The review was conducted by a panel of 13 experts who evaluated over 350 scientific reports on traffic pollution since 1980.

~ A recent report describes climate change beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and behaviors among Facebook users in 110 countries. Respondents in Chile (91%), Mexico, and Puerto Rico (both 88%) are the most likely to say that climate change should be either a “very high” or “high” priority for their government.

~ The US largest physician trade group - the American Medical Association - adopted for the first time a policy declaring climate change a public health crisis. Members agreed to put its lobbying heft behind policies aimed at limiting global warming and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The AMA will also create a strategy detailing what physician practices and the health-care sector can do to combat climate change.

~ The US announced that 650+ hospitals and thousands of other health providers have joined the Health Sector Climate Pledge launched by the Biden-Harris administration to cut emissions 50% by 2030.

~WHO launched the Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate Change and Health (ATACH) to support countries that have committed to making their health systems resilient and/or low carbon health systems as part of the COP26 Health Programme. To date, 20 of these countries have made commitments to get to net zero emissions.

~ The WHO-Civil Society Working Group on Climate and Health released an open letter to health education stakeholders calling on universities and other academic institutions to strengthen climate change education for all health professionals, and encouraging academic leadership, faculty, students and alumni to commit to work for change at their own universities.

HEALTH VOICES

MARK YOUR DIARY

8 July, 4pm Argentina - Perspectives on Climate Change and Health in Latin America - a webinar organized by SIBSA and GCHA (Spanish only). Youtube live: @SibsaSaludAmbiental.

12 July - 7:00 UTC and 15:00 UTC - GCHA Briefing: Health and the Treaty to Stop Fossil Fuels. In Healthy Climate Prescription the health community called a rapid and just phase out of fossil fuels. Momentum is growing around a potentially powerful new mechanism to deliver that - a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Join this briefing to learn more and discuss how and why the health community should support the call for a treaty to stop fossil fuels. Learn more and register.

25 July, 4-5h30pm CEST - WHO event "Virtual Indigenous Peoples Panel Discussion – Inputs to the Report on Health and Nature-Based Solutions''. Zoom link for event

19 and 28 July, 2pm Manila - Upcoming sessions in the #Health4Climate learning series towards climate action in South-East Asia. Learn more and register

4 August, 11:00 AM EST  Ride for their Lives 2022 introduction and Q&A on the initiative in English and Spanish  - Zoom link for registration

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GET MORE INVOLVED

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