The World Health Organization stressed that climate talks must now include formal negotiations on health, emphasising that the climate emergency is fundamentally a health emergency as well.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who attended the ongoing COP30 summit in Belém, Brazil, last week, urged global leaders to place health at the centre of climate discussions rather than treating it as an afterthought.
“Health is the strongest argument for climate action, yet it has long been side-lined in climate negotiations,” Tedros said during a press briefing in Geneva. He noted that people more readily understand the need to protect their own well-being and that of their families than distant environmental concerns like melting glaciers, even though both issues matter.
He added that COP30 would feature a dedicated Health Day on Thursday (Nov 13), during which host nation Brazil is expected to unveil a health-centred climate adaptation plan aimed at strengthening countries’ health systems and improving their ability to manage climate-related health threats.
“The climate crisis is, at its core, a crisis for human health,” Tedros reiterated.
Rudiger Krech, who leads WHO’s work on environment and climate change, said that despite growing conversations on health at COP summits, there is still no formal platform for negotiating health issues. “It’s time for health to become part of the official negotiation agenda, and we hope to see that happen at COP31 next year,” he said.