Health Community Policy Coordination at COP27

For COP27, the health community is working to ensure that health is reflected in government positions on existing UNFCCC agenda items, to leverage health as a tool for ambitious climate action, and to protect the health of populations. 

The health community has four key policy priorities for COP27, namely:

Four top demands:

  1. During COP27, governments must establish a clear process for delivering finance to lower income countries for the loss and damage these countries are experiencing from climate change, including for the damage to people’s health, and to health systems. As they respond to the impacts of a climate crisis not of their making, vulnerable low income countries desperately need these funds to provide essential supports when their populations are affected by extreme weather events and other climate-driven harms.   
  2. Governments must also commit to a deadline for full and just fossil fuel phase-out at COP27 as a public health imperative, and define how this will be delivered through the Mitigation Work Program. Only a complete phase-out of fossil fuels will deliver the full health benefits of cleaner air, protection from the health harms from climate change, and protection from the health harms caused by fossil fuel extraction, transport, processing and use.
  3. Rich nations must immediately meet the long overdue $100 billion global climate finance goal to support low income countries in their climate mitigation and adaptation, including making up the shortfall in what was delivered between 2020-2021. Half of this funding should be allocated to climate adaptation, and much greater investment must be made in health systems and programs. 
  4. During COP27 and subsequent  months, negotiators must integrate health metrics into the Global Goal on Adaptation and the Global Stocktake as key measures for assessing global progress on delivering the Paris Agreement.  This is clear and immediate climate action that governments can take to protect people’s health and well-being.

 

See here for detailed policy priorities on loss and damage, adaptation, mitigation and finance. Additional content on the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture, the Global Stocktake, and Article 6 will also be posted here in the lead-up to COP. 

 

To learn more about the UNFCCC negotiations and how they relate to health, we recommend this online course developed by WHO, UNITAR and UNCC:Learn.

GCHA joins an open letter calling for the UNFCCC to establish criteria for sponsors of COP that ensure they are aligned with the goals of UNFCCC