ENBEL at COP27 in Egypt: Highlighting health impacts of climate change

ENBEL was present and organized two side-events at the WHO health pavilion at COP27 highlighting the climate change impacts on woman’s health and how to advance climate change and health agenda, policy and financing in Africa.

By Caroline Muthoni (Aga Khan University), Fleur Monasso (Climate Centre), and Miriam Dahl (CICERO)

The visibility of the concerns of the health community at COP27 was again strong, building on the momentum that was created in Glasgow at COP26 last year. Events and dialogues on health and climate were prominent and a highlighted set of health and climate events was listed by WHO here, among them one of the two ENBEL events organized at the WHO Health Pavilion.

ENBEL researchers from our three African partner institutions present at COP27 in Egypt November 2022 (from right) Matthew Chersich (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa), Caroline Muthoni (Aga Khan University, Kenya) and Vincent Pagiwa (University of Botswana). The events were a chance to present and promote the CHANCE network established through the ENBEL project.

Advancing African Climate Change and Health Policies and Networking

ENBEL via the CHANCE network co-organised a WHO health pavilion COP27 side event with WHO AFRO  (Clim-Health network), with speakers from ENBEL (Matthew Chersich from University of Witwatersrand and Vincent Pagiwa from University of Botswana) , WHO-AFRO, Climate Centre, Global Climate and Health Alliance and two policy makers from Nigeria and Uganda.

Discussions revolved around opportunities in advancing the climate change and health agenda in the African region considering current progress on policy development while tapping into the available collaboration networks and trends of climate financing across African countries. Both the CHANCE and Clim-Health networks support policymakers and stakeholders in developing action guidelines and access to financing. In climate financing, there is a big gap in health as there is no demand. No health agency is accredited by the Global Climate Fund or the Adaptation Fund. One of the suggestions was the development of generic funding proposals by the CHANCE Network that can be adopted by any country to make it easier to access funding.

Researchers from the Belmont Forum CHAMNHA project researching heat and maternal and neonatal health in Africa also took part in the event.

The ENBEL and CHANCE Networks session co-organised by WHO AFRO at the WHO Health Pavilion at COP27 in Egypt. Photo: ENBEL

Climate change and women’s health

This year at COP27 gender was one of the main themes with November 14th being Gender Day. Women and children bear a greater burden to the effects of climate change especially on their health. In low-income countries climate change threatens to widen existing gender inequalities and urgent interventions are required to reduce their vulnerabilities.  Despite this, there was a glaring gender imbalance during the negotiations. Without female representation, outcomes in these high-level climate change discussions may not be gender responsive.

Caroline Muthoni, the ENBEL representative from Aga Khan University in Kenya presented during the climate change and women’s health session at the WHO Pavilion. Muthoni highlighted the need to identify and quantify the impacts of climate change on women through research and vulnerability assessments so that we can identify priority areas of climate action. She spoke about capacity building for all climate stakeholders on gender mainstreaming so that interventions can address the gender differences. Lastly, she mentioned the role of networking in bringing together people working on climate and women health to exchange best practices and educate each other, which is what the CHANCE network aims to do. 

Caroline Muthoni from Aga Khan University speaking at the COP27 side event.

Connecting health and climate change

WHO continues to call for “environmental ministries to build a common dialogue with health ministries and encourages UNFCCC Parties to mobilize action on health at global, regional, and national levels to implement the UNFCCC as a component to public health strategy”. ENBEL in its final year can contribute to brokering further dialogues and building these necessary bridges amongst actors, based on its solid research outcomes. WHO’s compilation of health and climate related policy briefs and events at their Pavilion can be viewed here.

At COP28 there will be a dedicated health day, which hopefully will give the health topic more prominence.

Research and dialogues on health impacts of climate change remain more important than ever

In general, COP27 brought many disappointing outcomes. Parties did not agree on new and ambitious language to curb greenhouse gas emissions, missing a key opportunity to build on earlier Glasgow text to ‘phase down’ fossil fuels. While the need to strive towards the 1.5 degree target is widely accepted, a few countries (Russia, Saudi Arabia) thwarted ambitions to support more immediate and drastic slashing of emissions. This is extremely concerning. Little clear progress was made on adaptation negotiations including on ensuring the doubling of adaptation finance will be achieved by 2025; similarly little progress made on agreeing a Global Goal on Adaptation. We will continue to push for inclusion of language related to locally-led adaptation (and the health aspects within these efforts) and to ensure finance and support is benefitting the most vulnerable. The jury is out on whether this COP will go down as a success or failure (e.g. see here). What is clear is that our research and dialogues on health impacts of climate change remain more important than ever.

Loss and damage

A few positive evolvements at COP27 fortunately also happened, such as the agreement to create a new fund to help vulnerable countries experiencing loss and damage. Many celebrated this achievement as a show of solidarity and a step towards rebuilding trust with developing countries (the US and EU capitulated in the final days and agreed to support such a Fund demanded by developing countries). Now the hard work begins to decide how the fund will work, how to ensure it is sufficiently capitalized, and how to ensure it benefits those most in need, quickly. Countries also agreed to operationalize the Santiago Network on L&D which aims to provide technical assistance to climate vulnerable countries. WHO published a first brief on Loss and Damage here