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According to the Children’s Climate Risk Index, climate change is already significantly affecting children globally, with approximately 1 billion children at ‘extremely high risk’ of experiencing the negative impacts of climate change. However, while research and literature linking climate change and environmental degradation to ecological and social outcomes has been rapidly proliferating, there is a noticeable lack of data when it comes to the intersection of climate, environment, and health. According to a 2021 WHO review, while documentation of ‘health impacts’ due to climate change is becoming robust, particularly in relation to infectious disease and temperature-related health hazards, many priority topics such as maternal and child health, nutrition, healthcare systems as a whole, and health actions or interventions in response to climate change are poorly documented or published on.
The Child Health Task Force hosted a nine-part webinar series in 2022-2023. The Climate Change and Health Forum is a follow up to that series. During this forum, The Child Health Task Force, UNICEF, Global Communities, and Save the Children will continue to explore the themes relate to climate and child health with other partners and networks
Session One: A Threat to Progress: Confronting the Effects of Climate Change on Child Health and Well-being’: New UNICEF report
UNICEF’s new report, ‘A Threat to Progress: Confronting the Effects of Climate Change on Child Health and Well-being’, compiles selected existing evidence from a range of academic sources on the impacts of climate change on child health and wellbeing and presents policy recommendations for action by policymakers. This forum session supported both dissemination of the topline findings and recommendations for how to protect children from climate-related adverse health impacts, as well as enabled a brief dialogue amongst collaborators and participants on how the climate and health community can work together to empower strong and urgent action. This report has been produced with the technical support of Karolinska Institutet.
This session was jointly hosted by the Children’s Environmental Health (CEH) Collaborative and CHTF, in collaboration with Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), Global Communities, Save the Children, the Global Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA), Karolinska Institutet (KI), and UNICEF.
Contributors:
- Abheet Solomon, Senior Adviser, UNICEF
- Dr. Tobias Alfven, Professor, Karolinska Institutet
- Dr. Jeni Miller, Executive Director, Global Climate and Health Alliance
- Giulia Gasparri, Technical Officer, PMNCH
- Dr. Hayalnesh Tarekegn (Bissie), Advisor, Climate Change and Health, Department of Global Health, Save the Children
- Cara Endyke-Doran, Sr. Director, Health, WASH, and Nutrition, Global Communities
Session Two: Climate and Health Financing: The Current Conversation and a Model for Application
The United Nations Framework on the Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) oversaw the 2015 Paris Agreement which sought the commitment of 196 parties to keep global warming under 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. Only in 2023 during the Conference of Parties (COP28) did it host the first ever Health Day in its history, thereby recognizing the severe impacts the climate crisis had on health and wellbeing. With it came a series of financing commitments from a variety of donors to addressing the most urgent climate and health challenges affecting frontline communities globally. Ahead of this year’s COP29, we aim to revisit the current landscape of climate and health finance, the global mechanisms in place for civil societies and governments from which funding can be accessed, and share an example of how one major funding mechanism is currently being leveraged to address climate and child health issues at a country-level.
This session will be jointly hosted by the Children’s Environmental Health (CEH) Collaborative and CHTF, Save the Children, Global Communities, Global Climate and Health Alliance, and UNICEF.
Contributors:
- Arthur Wyns, Former Health Advisor to COP28 and Research Fellow, University of Melbourne
- Elena Villalobos Prats, Capacity Building and Country Support Lead, Climate Change and Health, WHO
- Greg Kuzmak, Director, Health, The Rockefeller Foundation
- Alexis Feeney Tallman, Managing Director, Health, The Rockefeller Foundation
- Seonmi Choi, Senior Advisor, Climate Change and Environment, Global Fund
- Imelda Phadtare, Principal Advisor, Climate Change, Save the Children
- Swathi Manchikanti, Climate and Health, UNICEF
- Cara Endyke-Doran, Sr. Director, Health, WASH, and Nutrition, Global Communities
Session Three: Addressing Climate Change and Nutrition for Improving Health Outcomes: A Deep Dive
Malnutrition is already the biggest risk factor for children under five globally, and according to IHME, “if no action is taken on climate change, there will be an additional 40 million children chronically undernourished, also known as stunting, and 28 million wasted children”. Therefore it is critical to ensure that agricultural and nutritional programming, particularly in countries most vulnerable to climate hazards like extreme heat and droughts, are adapted to build communities that are resilient to climate change’s impacts in the future while protecting vulnerable populations now.
In this webinar (register here), UNICEF will highlight the global-level linkages between climate change and nutritional and health outcomes in children. Save the Children Ethiopia, the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD), and KnowlEdge will present an innovative project leveraging nature-based infrastructure (NBI) strategies to enhance nutrition security and climate resilience in countries experiencing severe climate risks. The speakers will highlight how the current interventions are building local resilience and how the outcomes are being measured. The integrated analysis of the Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Capacity Strengthening (NSA CASE) project, which highlights the significant impacts of nature-based solutions on enhancing nutrition security and climate resilience, can be found here.
This session is supported by the Children’s Environmental Health Collaborative, the Child Health Task Force, Global Communities, Save the Children, and UNICEF.
Contributors:
- Chloe Angood, Nutrition Specialist, UNICEF, Eastern and Southern Africa Region
- Liesbeth Casier, Lead, Public Procurement and Sustainable Infrastructure and Coordinator of the NBI Global Resource Centre, IISD
- Nathalia Niño Giraldo, Junior Project Manager, KnowlEdge & Associate in IISD
- Tamene Taye, NSA CASE Project Director, Save the Children Ethiopia