Vanessa Kerry, WHO Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health
Climate change is an existential threat to humanity. Already 3.3 billion people globally are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and we are on the precipice of unknowns in extreme weather, a warming globe, and our capacity for resilience. What is yet unacknowledged, however, is that the climate crisis is a health crisis. Climate change is killing us. One in four deaths today is attributable to a preventable environmental cause and seven million people die annually from
air pollution, more than in the entire COVID-19 pandemic.
Decades of poor decisions and inaction have led us to this moment. Elevations in global greenhouse gas emissions are fuelling extreme weather and heat, accelerating changes in our environment, and harming our global biodiversity. The impact is evident in our health, but also costs us trillions in reactive spending and lost productivity, grows inequality, and fuels migration. Global solidarity has never been more important. And it can only happen if we reject the status quo: we cannot afford to respond to the climate crisis with the same approaches.
For too long, our investments in health and development have been siloed, technocratic, and disease- or sector-focused. Short investment timelines—often driven by Global North funding agendas—rarely affected the priorities of the communities and countries purported to be served. The result has been piecemeal progress in a few select disease areas at the consequential expense of helping nations build resilient, fit-for-purpose, comprehensive healthcare systems that can handle repeated and myriad shocks to the system.
COVID-19 demonstrated this profound vulnerability: as the pandemic shut down our economic systems, consumed our health resources, and challenged our commitment to equity, we saw years of progress reversed. Over 90% of countries saw disruptions in health services, less-resourced countries fell to the back of the vaccine queue, and the world shut down. Our current international order failed.
We must invest in human wellbeing. This approach starts with resilient health systems to ensure adaptation to these growing burdens of disease and resilience to the subsequent impacts of extreme weather and heat that are killing us daily. Such investment will have positive externalities across all sectors—a global public good. A holistic approach centered on health systems strengthening—long-term financing, strong governance, management and leadership, updated infrastructure, reliable supply chain operations, and a fit-for-purpose skilled workforce to deliver care—is the best adaptation investment to address the inevitability of climate change.
The pandemic we face today is a pandemic of poor and expedient choices by world leaders, many in the private sector and a powerful few who drive the decisions that continue to harm our planet and its population. We must pivot to a new ambitious path —one with solidarity and partnership at its core— otherwise our health and survival are in peril.