Cross-Sectoral Collaboration: GCHA welcomes the HCN
The Global Climate and Health Alliance is thrilled to be the new host for the Health and Climate Network (HCN) secretariat, and welcomes the HCN Director Alison Doig to the team. With funding from the Clean Air Fund, we look forward to working closely together, and...
GCHA and HCN Joint Submission to the Global Stocktake
In February 2022, the Global Climate and Health Alliance made a joint submission to the Global Stocktake. The UNFCCC Global Stocktake is a process to evaluate the progress made in implementing the Paris Agreement, and therefore by how much ambition should be increased...
Why the Health Community Is Calling for the End of the Fossil Fuel Era
Ahead of COP27, the health community must – and will – continue to make our trusted voices heard. We can power a wave that will push our national leaders towards ambitious and accelerating action, to protect people’s health against the worst impacts of climate change – and dramatically slash climate warming fossil fuel emissions
#ClimatePrescription Video: Why World Leaders Must Take Climate Action to Protect our Health
This short two-minute mixed media film commissioned by the Global Climate and Health Alliance, and created by Wit and Wisdom includes testimonies and calls to action from 25 health workers from around the world, who have borne witness to climate-related health impacts on their patients. The video’s conclusions take the form of medical prescription as a direct call to world leaders to accept climate action as a cure to the climate crisis.
Towards stronger regional connections for the health community
The Regional Consultations are a series of online activities in the six WHO regions, which involved health professionals who are working to address causes and impacts of climate change. In this blog, GCHA’s Network and Engagement Lead Jennifer Kuhl highlights the...
Voting for a healthy future – how German activists made climate change and health an election issue
After 16 years under the leadership of chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany is set to vote for a new government on 26 September. Current polls predict a shift in majorities, most notably with a rise of the Green and Socialdemocratic Party. But regardless of what the...
YOUNGO Health Perspective and Demands on Climate Negotiations
As one of the leading youth groups formed within YOUNGO to advocate for climate change action and health, we want to stress why it is crucial to encourage meaningful youth participation in facilitating a green post-COVID-19 recovery. By Rodrigo Sánchez Iturregui...
How the Global Health Community Is Pushing Climate Action as Make-or-Break National Commitments Get Decided
As governments prepare for COP26, the health sector is not standing idly by — we are watching, we are engaging, and we are demanding that health be put front and centre of national climate policies, in order to protect people’s health from the impacts of climate warming.
Improving International Cooperation To Face Future Health And Climate Challenges
Izkia Siches Pastén is a Chilean surgeon physician. Now on her second mandate, she is the first woman and the youngest president of the Chilean Medical College, Chile’s largest trade association of doctors and physicians, which she has been leading since 2017. She is...
Health Must Be Part and Parcel of Climate Policy
With November’s COP26 fast approaching, this World Health Day message should inspire governments to both take responsibility and to seize the opportunity to commit to ambitious emissions reductions targets, aligned with the Paris Agreement, in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and to make health and equity a central focus of national climate policies.
Climate Medicine will constitute the cornerstone for the practice of Medicine in the 21st century
The 2018 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change stated that “climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”. In 2019, the world’s leading medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, provided readers with “a...
Healthy people need a healthy planet
The climate crisis is the greatest health threat of the 21st century and threatens not only biodiversity but also our health. For a long time, this threat has remained abstract - partly because of the way we have been communicating and highlighting the severe impacts...
The Escazu Agreement: How the idea of a “healthy environment” became a stumbling block
The Escazu Agreement, the first treaty on protection of the environment in South America and the Carribean, and the world’s first to include protections for environmental human rights defenders, has been rejected as “inconvenient” by the Chilean government of Sebastian Piñera, which declined to ratify it on September 22, 2020.
Chile’s newly published NDC aims for health protection through climate action, though must be made more than voluntary to be effective
In April 2020, Chile officially presented its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the United Nations (UN), updating its commitments on how it will reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the mitigation of climate change, in line with the Paris Agreement...
COVID-19 Useful Links
We have compiled a non-exhaustive list of useful links to associations and organisations providing the latest information and guidelines about the coronavirus, causing an illness called Covid-19. The virus is spreading worldwide and it is important we all follow...