- Join today’s Health Leaders call for Life-saving Transition Away from Fossil Fuels press conference November 18, 1730 Belém time – in-person and livestreamed
- Negotiating to Protect Health and Lives: Global Climate and Health Alliance Recommendations for COP30
Belém, 18 November 2025:- With the hours ticking down towards the end of the COP 30 climate summit, decisions with significant implications for health hang in the balance.
“With a number of vital issues still in play at COP30, the health community is calling on governments at the Amazon’s COP to deliver on the meeting’s avowed objective”, said Dr Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, a consortium of more than 200 health professional and health civil society organisations and networks from around the world addressing climate change. “Belém was promised to be the COP of implementation, where commitments would be turned into actionable and measurable plans, supported by the necessary finance and collaboration to bring them to fruition. Protecting people’s health means implementing climate action, and with the days ticking away, now is the moment to take this action.”
Measuring and Financing Adaptation for Health
“A key outcome for health at COP30 should be increased finance for adaptation, and adoption of adaptation indicators”, said Jess Beagley, Policy Lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “Governments must commit to delivering new adaptation finance of $120B per year over the next five years, to enable developing countries to deal with climate change impacts they did not cause, and from which they are experiencing disproportionate harms. Under the Paris Agreement, developed countries are obliged to provide that support.”
Following two years of work by countries, supported by academic experts, UN agencies and civil society, governments at COP30 are scheduled to adopt a set of indicators by which countries can measure their adaptation progress, indicators that will drive forward national climate adaptation efforts to effectively protect populations. Ten indicators focus specifically on health, and many more of the 100 indicators are vital to safeguarding health.
“Adopting the adaptation indicators will be a key measure of success for COP30”, said Beagley, “but only if they also include good indicators to measure, and thus create accountability, to ensure wealthy countries provide the necessary finance, technical support, and capacity building to assist developing countries.”
“Finance for adaptation isn’t a cost, it’s an investment – in creating resilient countries that can better face the climate impacts we’re seeing,” said Miller. “Investing in the systems that people’s health depends on – water, food, healthcare, energy – so that they can withstand climate hits will help ensure healthier populations, stronger economies, and communities are able to protect and regenerate the natural world on which our survival depends. It is particularly important that wealthy countries meet their adaptation finance responsibilities to developing countries, and do so in ways that do not aggravate debt.”
Ensuring Just Transition
“Another key decision point at this COP is the adoption of a global mechanism for delivering a just transition, and principles to underpin that work”, said Beagley. “By the end of COP30, governments must adopt the Belém Action Mechanism for a Global Just Transition (BAM). We must transition from the unsustainable, human- and planet-harming systems of today to systems compatible with providing a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment for all.”
“A healthy just transition means new livelihoods for workers do not recreate toxic and dangerous work environments such as those at fossil fuel facilities; that families and communities dislocated by these transitions are also supported; and that workers and communities have long term access to healthcare,” said Miller.
“Principles for a just transition must include the right to health, the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; as well as access to healthcare and social protection,” added Beagley.
Protecting Information Integrity
“For the first time, a COP climate summit has really elevated the issue of information integrity as key to climate progress”, Miller noted. “The health community has significant experience with the harm that disinformation and misinformation can cause, from anti-vaccine communications that leave populations vulnerable to preventable diseases, to the deliberate disinformation of health harming industries like tobacco.”
“We’ve seen the fossil fuel industry use exactly the same disinformation tactics as tobacco, with the predictable result of delaying progress on climate action and putting people around the world in peril”, said Beagley. “It’s time for UNFCCC as well as host countries to put in place strict conflict of interest, lobbying, sponsorship and supplier policies, to keep polluting industries and their greenwashing out of the climate talks.”
An additional issue on information integrity has raised its head during this week, as some countries have challenged the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, currently the official source of the “best available science” to underpin decisions within the COP process.
“We cannot solve a complex problem like climate change without a robust understanding of the evidence”, said Nova Tebbe, Post-Doctoral Researcher with Global Climate and Health Alliance. “Rather than undermine the role of the IPCC, it is vital that it be bolstered, including by strengthening evidence by and about developing and vulnerable countries; and by protecting IPCC findings and recommendations from inappropriate influence.”
Roadmap for Fossil Fuel Phase Out
Another COP first is the proposal for a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels. At COP28 governments agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels”. Since then, no progress has been made to deliver on that agreement, and some countries have worked to walk it back or weaken it. At COP30, reports suggest that about 60 countries, so far, are in agreement to initiate developing a roadmap for a Transition Away from Fossil Fuels (TAFF). If agreed to at COP30, this would begin a process, led by the COP presidency countries over the next couple of years, to develop that implementation plan.
“Fossil fuels are the primary driver of climate change, and cause an overwhelming array of disease and death in communities around the world, even beyond the impacts of climate change,” said Miller. “It is long past time the COP process produced a concrete pathway for phasing out fossil fuels. In Belém governments must agree to start that process. Meanwhile, it is unconscionable that four wealthy, developed countries – the US, Canada, Australia, and Norway – have increased their oil and gas production by 40% since 2015. While other countries are forging ahead to transition to clean renewable energy and electric vehicles, showing that it can be done, these countries are pumping and exporting poison. Wealthy countries should be leading the way, both in reducing their own emissions, and in turning the tide on fossil fuel production.”
ENDS
Contact:
Dave Walsh, Communications Advisor, Global Climate and Health Alliance, [email protected], +34 691 826 764 (Available from 0630 CET)
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/who-we-are/about/
