COP29: Health-focused climate action in the spotlight

LAGOS - Health experts are urging countries to earmark billions of dollars of the financing to be pledged at the COP29 summit to fund healthcare policies as pollution and extreme weather events take their toll on humans’ well-being.

With the world reeling from a string of extreme weather events this year, hospitals and health workers from Nigeria to India have had to deal with disease outbreaks linked to floods and the effects of deadly heatwaves, while responding to new disease patterns linked to rising temperatures across the globe.

"Human health is the most compelling argument for climate action," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said at an event on health and the climate at COP29 in Baku.

Rising temperatures have contributed to heart disease and fuelled the spread of communicable diseases, he said. Air pollution was causing some 7 million premature deaths each year, and climate change was driving food insecurity and malnutrition.

Here is how global warming is affecting our health.

Air pollution

The United Nations has called air pollution "the biggest environmental health risk of our time."

Airborne pollutants are responsible for about one-third of deaths from stroke, chronic respiratory disease and lung cancer, as well as a quarter of deaths from heart attacks.

Outdoor pollution from fossil fuels and the burning of biomass, such as wood and charcoal, led to about 3.3 million deaths in 2021, while indoor air pollution linked to dirty fuels used for cooking and other activities caused 2.3 million deaths in 2020 across 65 countries, according to a study published in the Lancet journal in October.

Although most countries include health considerations in their national  climate plans, the health cost of air pollution specifically was missing from two-thirds of national climate plans submitted by countries to the U.N, according to the Global Climate Health Alliance scorecard last year.

Those plans, called Nationally Determined Contributions, are a set of commitments that outline how countries plan to achieve the Paris Agreement's goals of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

They are updated every five years, and wealthy nations that are signatories to the Paris Agreement are expected to ramp up their financial commitments to help less developed nations at the COP29 climate talks before they are submitted in 2025.

Health campaigners at the summit want countries to view emission targets through a health lens, including by tackling air pollution, and pledge to fund more programmes for health adaptation and resilience.

"We need to not only think of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector but also tackle air pollution issues so that people can breathe clean air," Jeni Miller, executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, told Context.

"Governments need to think of how lowering people's air pollution exposure can lead to fewer asthma exacerbations and heart attacks, and how these health benefits can help offset the cost of taking that action."

Deadly heatwaves

From gig workers delivering food under blazing heat in the Philippines to teachers and students sweltering in baking classrooms in the U.S., workers are increasingly battling record-breaking temperatures to do their jobs.

Between May 2023 and April 2024, global mean surface temperatures peaked at 1.61 C above pre-industrial levels, prompting urgent calls for heat protection policies for people working in dangerous conditions.

Those most at risk include gig workers, agricultural labourers and construction workers, many of whom don't get regular breaks or have easy access to drinking water.

Pregnant women and babies are also vulnerable, but heat exposure takes its heaviest toll on older people.

The October Lancet report said the number of heat-related deaths among those over the age of 65 was now 167% higher than it was in the 1990s.

As temperatures stay higher for longer and later in the day, it becomes harder for bodies to cool down and recover.

"There is an increase in the number of sleep hours lost because of heat exposure. So people are losing the capacity to adequately rest, which obviously impacts mental and physical health," Marina Romanello, one of the authors of the Lancet report, told Context.

Disease outbreaks

Climate change is also fuelling the spread of infectious diseases like dengue and malaria.

Earlier this year, a report from the World Economic Forum said global warming will cause a catastrophic rise in mosquito-borne diseases, including dengue, Zika and chikungunya, spreading them to places that have been less affected in the past, including Europe and the United States.

An additional 500 million people could be exposed by 2050, it said.

From Africa to Asia, floods linked to climate change have led to thousands of deaths and triggered deadly outbreaks of waterborne diseases this year.

Last month, Nigeria's northeastern Borno state was hit with cholera after floods that displaced nearly 2 million people.

WHO said that devastating floods across Central and West Africa this year had affected more than 4 million people and heightened the risk of waterborne diseases.

(Reporting by Bukola Adebayo; Editing by Clar Ni Chonghaile and Ayla Jean Yackley.)