2021 Global Conference on Health and Climate Change

6 November 2021

Glasgow, UK,

Conference Overview

The 2021 Global Conference on Health & Climate Change, with a special focus on Climate Justice and the Healthy and Green Recovery from COVID-19, will convene on the margins of the COP26 UN climate change conference. The aim of the conference is to call on governments, businesses, institutions and financial actors to drive a green, healthy and resilient recovery from COVID-19. The Conference will support and highlight countries’ ambitious and just Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement that promote and protect health. It will also mobilize the rapidly growing movement of health professionals around the world who are now driving ambitious climate action.

The conference will be delivered in a hybrid format, with both in-person and virtual speakers and attendees, using a dedicated hybrid conferencing platform. Recordings and short videos will be shared to complement the Programme. Additional materials may also be provided via a dedicated conferencing platform. The conference will include two interactive segments dedicated to roundtable discussions for those attending in person, and two breakout sessions for those attending virtually.

The Global Conference on Health & Climate Change is organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA), in close collaboration with the Glasgow Caledonian University and its Centre for Climate Justice, the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, the Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the Wellcome Trust.

Watch the conference here

Background

In the global response to COVID-19, WHO has repeatedly urged that countries must work together as one global family to address the impacts of the pandemic. Similarly, the global health threat of climate change requires global collaboration, increased finance, and the equitable sharing of solutions.

The Paris Agreement is the central instrument for achieving a more stable and safer climate for current and future generations. At its heart, the Paris Agreement is about caring for people and protecting them from an uncertain and increasingly unsafe future. Everyone has the right to a healthy environment, free of pollution and its harmful consequences.

Protecting people’s health from climate change requires transformational action in every sector, including on energy, transport, nature, food systems and finance. The public health benefits from implementing these ambitious climate actions far outweigh their costs. Health leaders everywhere have been sounding the alarm on climate change and are increasingly taking steps to protect their communities from worsening climate impacts, while reducing their own emissions.

On November 6, the Global Conference on Health & Climate Change will bring together a wide range of key actors in public health and climate change policy in order to incorporate public health and climate justice considerations in the UN climate negotiations, and call for a healthy, green and resilient COVID-19 recovery. The conference will share the "health arguments for ambitious climate action", as outlined in the WHO COP26 Special Report on Climate Change and Health, and will highlight several case studies of initiatives, policies, and cross-sectoral collaborations that are taking ambitious climate and health action.

Programme

The overarching theme of the Conference is a Healthy and Green Recovery in line with the WHO Manifesto published in May 2020, and will include sessions on each of its 6 Prescriptions: nature, food systems, sustainable infrastructure, clean energy, cities, and stopping pollution.

The Conference will also highlight some of the main findings of the “The Health Argument for Climate Action – A COP26 Special Report”, as well as the health co-benefits of a broad range of climate policies, including clean energy policies; air quality measures; subsidy reform; smart agriculture and sustainable food systems; educational and civil society involvement; nature-based solutions and others.

A series of WHO-led initiatives, case-studies and workshops throughout 2020-2021 will feed into the outcomes of the Global Conference on Health & Climate Change, as well as the COP26 UN climate conference. Download the full conference agenda here.