How has health figured in previous COPs? What are the expected health-related outcomes of the COP28? What challenges do experts foresee?
The story so far: On December 3, the global health landscape is expected to reach a turning point. For the first time in 28 years of climate change negotiations, the climate-health nexus will take centre stage at the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP28) summit in UAE. The ‘groundbreaking Health Day at COP28’, as President-Designate Dr. Sultan Al Jaber put it, is expected to pose two questions: how public health can become resilient to climate change, and who will finance this transformation.
Growing evidence has highlighted the profound ways in which climate crises erode socioeconomic and environmental conditions. Unabated greenhouse gas emissions are triggering extreme weather events, air pollution, food insecurity, water scarcity and population displacement — which, in turn, alter the trajectory of vector-borne diseases and endanger public health infrastructures. And this chain of climate-related health events is not unfolding evenly around the world: Africa, Asia, South and Central America, and small island developing states, which have contributed the least to climate change, are bearing the brunt. In India, particulate air pollution is said to be the ‘greatest threat to human health’, and heat-related deaths may kill an additional 10 lakh people annually by 2090, according to data from the Lancet Countdown and the Climate Vulnerable Forum. If countries fail to meet emission targets set under the Paris Agreement, climate change-related events will cause at least 34 lakh deaths per year, by the end of this century.
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