by Menka Goundan, Senior Programme Manager, ARROW
On 2nd December 2023, the eve of the first Health Day at the 28th session of the Conference of Parties (COP28), the COP28 Presidency, in partnership with the World Health Organization and UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention, unveiled the ‘COP28 UAE Declaration on Climate and Health’ to place health at the heart of climate action and accelerate the development of climate resilient, sustainable and equitable health systems.
COP28 UAE Declaration on Climate and Health
Endorsed by 123 countries, the Declaration was developed with the support of a number of ‘country champions’ including Brazil, Malawi, the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Kenya, Fiji, India, Egypt, Sierra Leone, and Germany. This joint action comes as annual deaths from polluted air hit almost 9 million and as 189 million people are exposed to extreme weather-related events each year.
The declaration is timely, as this is the first year of the Global Stocktake. The global stocktake is a process for countries and stakeholders to assess where they are collectively making progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement – and where they’re not. We are not on track to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The window for meaningful change is closing, and the time to act is now. The stocktake takes place every five years, with the first-ever stocktake set to conclude at COP28. It is intended to inform the next round of climate action plans under the Paris Agreement (nationally determined contributions, or ‘NDCs’) to be put forward by 2025.
The Declaration covers a range of action areas at the nexus of climate and health. These include building more climate-resilient health systems, strengthening cross-sectoral collaboration to reduce emissions and maximise the health benefits of climate action, and increasing finance for climate and health solutions. Signatories have also committed to incorporate health targets in their national climate plans and improve international collaboration to address the health risks of climate change, including at future COPs.
No mention of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
Despite covering a range of action areas, the declaration does not explicitly mention sexual and reproductive health and rights, a key area of health affected by the adverse effects of climate change. Women and girls are mentioned once alongside other vulnerable groups.
There are evidences that prove that women face higher health risks from the impacts of climate change. In one mapping research conducted by Carbon Relief in 2020, an analysis of 130 peer-reviewed studies finds that women and girls often face disproportionately high health risks from the impacts of climate change compared to men and boys. The analysis shows that 68% (89) of the 130 studies found that women were more affected by health impacts associated with climate change than men. For instance, it shows women and girls are more likely to die due to heatwaves in France, China and India, as well as in tropical cyclones in Bangladesh and the Philippines. Furthermore, in various world regions, women are more susceptible to suffer poor mental health, partner violence, and food insecurity following extreme weather events compared to men.
In 2023, ARROW’s partners Badabon Sangho in Bangladesh and LILAK: Purple Action for Indigenous Women’s Rights in the Philippines conducted scoping studies on the nexus of SRHR and climate change.
Scoping studies in the Philippines and Bangladesh
In the Philippines, it was reported that climate crisis will further threaten food security and the sufficiency of livelihoods for indigenous and rural communities. Given the responsibilities and roles ascribed to indigenous women as caretakers of households and food providers, they become hungrier and undernourished, directly impacting their sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Low birth weight amongst surviving babies of undernourished mothers can lead to stunted growth and cognitive impairment. Pregnant and lactating women, women of reproductive age, adolescent girls, and infants and young children who have specific nutritional and dietary needs, are especially worse off during natural disasters, failed crops, climatic events and resulting food shortages, and often suffer increased levels of violence.
In Bangladesh, Badabon Sangho’s study reports that water logging caused by sea level rise, attributed to climate change, disrupts land based productive system. This, in turn, aggravates women’s malnutrition in affected areas, largely due to gender-biased intra-household food distribution and increased salinisation of water sources. Women often times collect fresh water for family consumption and continue to use saline water for themselves. Water logging compels women to stay in marooned conditions for several months a year. Prolonged exposure to filthy water causes severe skin diseases and gynaecological problems. Gestational hypertension and pre-eclampsia in pregnant women are attributed to consumption of saline water. This condition poses a substantial threat to maternal health, increasing the likelihood of maternal mortality and stillbirth.
One headline finding of the Synthesis Report (SYR) of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) stated that finance, technology and international cooperation are critical enablers for accelerated climate action. The AR6 noted that if climate goals are to be achieved, both adaptation and mitigation financing would need to increase many-fold. While there is sufficient global capital to eliminate the global investment gaps, there are barriers to redirecting capital to climate action.
New finance commitments at COP28
With the announcement of the Declaration on Climate and Health, a set of new finance commitments on climate and health has been announced to back up these political commitments. This includes a USD 300 million commitment by the Global Fund to prepare health systems, USD 100 million by the Rockefeller Foundation to scale up climate and health solutions, and an announcement by the UK Government of up to GBP 54 million.
With this increased financial commitment in realising the Health and Climate Declaration, women and girls in all their diversities must demand recognition for increased health concerns that they face, including the vulnerability, given the compromise of their SRH. There is a mountain of evidence that proves this, and these new financial commitments must commit real resources to strengthen health systems and raise awareness on the nexus of SRHR and climate change.
Women globally demand these five things:
- Laws and policies: To combat the disproportionate impact of climate change on the health and rights of women and girls, we need more laws and policies that meet women and girls’ specific needs.
- End maternal mortality: Climate change is increasing the risk of preventable deaths of women during pregnancy and childbirth. We need to end these deaths now.
- SRHR in climate action: Countries must include sexual and reproductive health in their climate action and response plans.
- Focus on the vulnerable and marginalised: To build climate resilience and leave no one behind, women and girls in the poorest, most-at-risk countries, must be prioritised in climate action and response plans.
- Increase climate financing: Global leaders need to significantly increase climate financing, specifically for the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls.
