Unhealthy Climate

As the global negotiations increasingly talk about the impacts of climate change on health, the upcoming UN CoP meet in Morocco will debate one important aspect: how to fund health adaptation

- Shreeshan Venkatesh

IN JULY this year, Siberia, one of the world’s coldest permanently inhabited towns with temperatures dipping to -70°C, reported cases of anthrax. It is a disease caused by bacterium Bacillus anthracis, which thrives in hot and humid trop- ics. Anthrax has already spread to 1,500 raindeer in the area and infected 40 residents. It has also killed a 12-year-old boy.

What prompted the outbreak? Recent high temperatures in the region, which have touched 35°C, have started melting the permafrost, exposing the carcass of an already-infected reindeer, which scientists say had remained frozen for over 75 years.

The anthrax outbreak is another rude reminder of how climate change is increasingly impacting our health and lives, a correlation that has largely been overlooked in the global climate change talks. Picture this: For the first 21 years of the annual Conferences of Parties (cops) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (unfccc), health failed to feature in a big way. But the narrative is slowly changing.

The message from the recently concluded Second Global Conference on Health and Climate in Paris was clear—health has to be included “in an integral way in future climate negotiations”. The meeting held on July 7-8 by the World Health Organization (who) and the French government, which currently holds the presidency of cop to the unfccc, could provide the right setting to include health in the upcoming cop meeting in Morocco this year. Even who is now actively intervening in major multilateral fora to integrate health in climate talks. For example, a major effort is being made to include the health agenda in Habitat III, a UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, which will take place in Ecuador during October 17–20, 2016.