Time to Adapt: Accelerating Climate Adaptation for Health Equity
The impacts of climate change on global health are unfolding at a distressing pace. Compromised food systems, widespread water shortages, and pollution are mounting pressure on primary healthcare infrastructure and deteriorating health outcomes globally. Furthermore, developing countries, despite having a minimal contribution to the global carbon footprint, are bearing the most severe consequences of these interconnected challenges.
Addressing health effects caused by climate change will require collective mobilization, particularly with respect to funding. The health sector has not been a target of climate financing, with a negligible fraction of global health funding aligning with climate adaptation. A growing, multi-stakeholder push to rethink the global financial architecture, however, as proposed in the Bridgetown Initiative and addressed by the New Global Financing Pact Summit in Paris this June, presents an opportunity to integrate issues of health equity and health system resilience into broader climate action plans more directly.
Against this backdrop, Foreign Policy, Foundation S, and Africa-Europe Foundation (AEF) will host a high-level event to spotlight the health challenges posed by climate change and to advance the conversation on the financing required to support climate adaptation in order to achieve health equity. The event will also launch an action report produced by the Collective MindS Climate Council, the think-tank of Foundation S. The report highlights the connection between climate change and health, and the importance of supporting locally led adaptation solutions to strengthen health resilience in the face of climate change.