Watch our pre-COP30 briefing on YouTube: What Will COP30 Mean for Health?
Belém, 7 November 2025:- Ahead of the COP 30 climate summit, the health community is calling on all governments, led by developed countries, to honor responsibilities to support adaptation and climate action in developing countries, and to lead the transition away from fossil fuels in order to deliver clean air, saved lives, strong health systems, and sustainable economies.
“At COP30, national delegations must make people’s lives, health, and well-being central to the outcome they deliver”, said Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, representing more than 200 health organizations addressing climate change. “Delegates must strive to achieve a future where children breathe clean air, health systems are resilient, and communities no longer face the daily threat of floods, heatwaves, and pollution.”
“To deal with the impacts of climate change already facing us, our governments must strengthen the systems on which people’s health depends, such as water, food, energy, healthcare, and transport”, said Miller. “Without investment in adaptation in every country, communities around the world will face injuries, illnesses, trauma and deaths that should have been prevented”.
“However, recent climate disasters have laid bare the limits of adaptation”, Miller continued. Hurricane Melissa has devastated Caribbean communities, destroyed hospitals and left thousands without clean water or electricity. South Asia has endured record-breaking floods, and heat, pushing temperatures beyond human survivability. Wildfires across Europe and North America have turned skies orange and choked emergency rooms with smoke. Under current climate commitments, this is only the beginning – temperatures will continue to rise, and the impacts will exceed our ability to adapt. These are not isolated crises; they are symptoms of an overheated planet.”
“Human activity, primarily the extraction and burning of coal, oil, and gas, has already warmed our climate by 1.5°C since pre-industrial times. Based on current national policies we can expect to see warming nearly double by the end of this century. Every fraction of a degree intensifies the burden of disease, poverty, and displacement”, added Miller.
The recent Global Climate and Health Alliance report, Cradle to Grave: The Health Toll of Fossil Fuels and the Imperative for a Just Transition, provides the most comprehensive global overview yet of the health harms caused by fossil fuels. The report examines impacts across the entire fossil fuel life cycle, from extraction to waste, and throughout the human life course, from pregnancy to old age.
“When COP30 delegates leave Belém, success will be measured by the courage governments have demonstrated to act on what is already known: that fossil fuels are destroying people’s health from cradle to grave; and that delaying investment in adaptation and climate action will result in increasingly insurmountable impacts and costs”, concluded Miller. “To ignore these realities would be to betray both science and humanity.”
What to Expect on Health at COP30
“There are four areas in which progress at COP30 is key for people’s health”, said Jess Beagley, Policy Lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance “The Global Goal on Adaptation (including finance and other adaptation support); the Just Transition Work Programme; addressing trust and conflicts of interest; and implementing the COP28 commitment to phase out fossil fuels.”
Adaptation
“Adaptation isn’t just seawalls and clinics, it’s people’s health, livelihoods and dignity – nutrition, water, safe homes, mental health, and resilient care”, said Beagley. “Most countries now acknowledge health in their climate plans – 91% of NDCs. COP30 must deliver concrete, trackable measures of adaptation, and must track whether the support developed countries are required to provide to developing countries is being delivered.”
“During COP30, governments must adopt indicators under the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) that include health across targets, and lock in means of implementation – finance, technology transfer and capacity”, added Beagley. “Successful outcomes on adaptation will be a litmus test for a successful COP30”.
Just Transition
“Climate policies can improve health, such as clean cooking, clean air, safer jobs, greener cities – or harm health if done badly for instance unsafe mining, pollution or lost livelihoods”, continued Beagley. “A just transition means every worker, family, and community benefits from clean energy, food security and healthy environments. At COP30, governments must establish a robust institutional architecture for the Just Transition Work Programme that embeds health, gender, and social protection, and must adopt the proposed Belém Action Mechanism for a Global Just Transition (BAM), to coordinate implementation support, so that benefits such jobs, clean air, and food security are real and measurable.”
“These mechanisms must be underpinned by principles for just transitions that protect the right to health and a clean healthy sustainable environment, access to healthcare, and social protection, for all.”
Trust: Conflict-of-Interest Rules
Public trust in COP depends on tackling disinformation, and keeping health-harming industries from steering outcomes. Since the Paris Agreement was agreed at COP21, COPs have seen a growing presence of fossil fuel lobbyists. At COP29, the fossil fuel industry presence was again outsized (over 1,770 fossil lobbyists), larger than nearly all national delegations.
“This cannot continue. Public trust in COP depends on excluding fossil fuel influence and disinformation”, said Beagley. “The UNFCCC must institute a conflict of interest policy, including disclosing delegates’ affiliations and funding. COP host countries must commit to excluding representatives of polluting industries from their teams, bar sponsorships by these industries, and avoid hiring marketing and communications agencies that serve these industries. And participating countries themselves should rigorously vet their delegation members, to meet the same standards.”
Information Integrity is a focus for the COP30 Presidency, which has partnered with the UN and UNESCO to spearhead the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change. Through Global Climate and Health Alliance’s Break the Fossil Influence initiative, health organizations are leading the way, by breaking ties with marketing and PR agencies that have fossil fuel clients, to withdraw their support for agencies that contribute to fossil fuel disinformation.
Addressing the Root Cause: Phasing Out Fossil Fuels
“At COP28 governments agreed to transition away from fossil fuels – a commitment that now needs to be implemented”, said Beagley. “Over the coming days, governments must commit to halting the expansion of new coal, oil and gas projects and set binding timelines for phasing out those still operating, as part of developing a roadmap for global fossil fuel phase-out. That roadmap should ensure that wealthier, developed countries reduce emissions fastest, and provide finance for transitions in developing countries.”
“Countries and provinces that have phased out fossil fuel use have seen almost immediate improvements in people’s health”, Beagley added. “Continued investment in fossil fuels is simply incompatible with both a livable climate and healthy populations. The $1.3 trillion currently given in direct fossil fuel subsidies must be redirected toward clean, renewable energy and strengthening health and social infrastructure. Every dollar spent on fossil fuels is a dollar diverted from hospitals, schools, and adaptation efforts.”
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/
