Health Day at COP28: Experts spotlight interconnectedness of health, nutrition and climate change

04 Dec 2023 --- For the first time, the 28th UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), taking place in the UAE until 12 December, hosted a day dedicated to health. International organizations welcome the conference’s focus on nutrition and health but call for further commitments from governments to address the impact of climate change on availability and access to nutritious food.

Over 120 countries have endorsed the COP28 UAE Declaration on Climate and Health, which stresses the “importance of addressing the interactions between climate change and human health and well-being.” 

Nutrition Insight discusses urgent health and nutrition areas to be addressed at COP28 with climate and nutrition experts from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Claire McConnell, food and climate expert at the IISD, tells us that the signing of the declaration and the first dedicated health day “marks a significant step toward recognizing and addressing the interlinkages between health and climate.” 

“It is promising that Sunday’s COP28 Declaration on Climate and Health recognized sustainable, healthy diets as a key pillar of climate action,” agrees Vivian Maduekeh, climate and health program coordinator at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.

“However, the agreement did not refer to phasing out fossil fuels and was overshadowed by the COP president’s astonishing assertion that there is ‘no science’ showing that a fossil fuel phase-out is required to limit temperature rises to 1.5°C.” 

She underscores: “The evidence could not be clearer: to prevent climate catastrophe, leaders at COP28 must commit to phase out — not phase down — fossil fuels.”

The experts note that the COP28 health day recognizes the importance of climate change for health outcomes.Climate-health nexus  
Purnima Menon, senior director of food and nutrition policy at CGIAR, adds that the first Health Day at COP28 is a huge win for the global health community. 

“It has finally fully recognized the importance of climate change for health outcomes and re-emphasized the impacts on vulnerable communities and individuals, especially women and children, and on the importance of investments in actions to strengthen health systems.” 

“The challenges we face, including climate, food and nutrition, are interconnected,” she highlights. “Without follow through from the global community to finance and support actions against food and nutrition insecurity, we will not meet the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Menon urges to more clearly showcase the growing evidence of the connections between climate-health and climate-nutrition. “The overlap between these elements is undeniable, but evidence so far has often been insufficient to convince investors, policymakers, funders and the public more broadly on the urgency to tackle these crises.” 

She calls for urgent actions to tackle the food and climate crises, including reimagining food systems to make them greener and more resilient in climate change, protecting access to nutritious foods for all.

Holistic approach and commitments 
Maduekeh urges COP28 to take a holistic approach to health, committing to address the harms the climate crisis inflicts on physical, nutritional, infrastructural, environmental and mental health. 

“We hope that the conversations on Health Day will foster a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of these issues and underscore the need for greater collaboration among the health, food, energy and other sectors.”

She adds that the Global Alliance for the Future of Food hopes to include healthy diets from sustainable food systems as a focal point in health discussions. “It is important for the health community to advocate for a shift in our consumption patterns toward wholesome, nutritious, minimally processed and culturally appropriate diets. Such a shift contributes to the overall health of people and the planet.”

Climate change and malnutrition are two of today’s most significant challenges, which disproportionately impacts individuals.IISD’s McConnell calls for concrete, time-bound commitments from governments to develop or improve domestic policy to improve access to safe, nutritious and affordable food. 

“For example, examining how public support for agriculture can better incentivize the production of healthier foodstuffs, such as fruit and vegetables. Or how social safety nets, such as food stamps, can help make a healthy diet more accessible and affordable for all.” 

Impact of climate change on nutrition 
The climate change experts detail haunting figures on the impact of climate change on malnutrition and diseases. 

For example, Menon underscores that worsening climate change threatens to have devastating consequences on access to health and nutrition. “In a world that is 2°C warmer, an additional 189 million people will face hunger. In a 4°C warmer world, an additional 1.8 billion people will go hungry.” 

Dr. Nancy Aburto, deputy director of the Food and Nutrition Division at the FAO, underscores that climate change and malnutrition are two of humanity’s most significant challenges, adding that this disproportionately impacts individuals already vulnerable to malnutrition. 

“Currently, as many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every day, 2.2 billion are overweight or suffer obesity and more than 2 billion suffer from at least one deficiency in critical vitamins and minerals.”

She cautions: “Without urgent action, climate change will result in 250,000 additional premature deaths expected each year by 2050 due to climate change-induced malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress (not to mention deaths caused by the impact of climate-induced natural disaster), and 100 million additional people will be pushed into extreme poverty by 2030.”

“No health without good nutrition” 
Aburto details that good nutrition is an integral part of climate solutions. It underpins healthy people, resilient communities, and thriving economies needed to drive sustainable development. 

“At COP28, I hope that we are successful in inspiring a shift in thinking to the opportunity and the solutions that transformation to a sustainable agri-food system for healthy diets can bring for mitigating and adapting to climate change, leading to greater commitment, policy and action for climate and nutrition to achieve sustainable development.” 

COP28 should address how the climate crisis affects physical, nutritional, infrastructural, environmental and mental health.She adds that dietary shifts toward more diverse and sustainable options can lead to “cascading changes” in agri-food systems by increasing the diversity of foods produced and reducing the environmental footprint of food.

“It is difficult to elevate a singular health or nutrition issue above others because without good nutrition, you cannot have good health, and without good health, you cannot have a healthy life, resilient communities and thriving economies.” 

FAO considers enabling healthy diets from sustainable agri-food systems a critical priority in the context of COP28, explains Aburto. “We need to focus on underlying drivers of good nutrition and health, taking a systems’ approach for solutions that address malnutrition in all forms.”

Health and nutrition priorities 
Maduekeh shares that the Global Alliance for the Future of Food has identified two significant health and nutritional areas that COP28 must address. 

“The first is unequal access to food in the current industrial food system. Globally, we produce more than enough food to feed everyone. Hunger today is not so much a consequence of yields being too low or global supplies being unable to meet demand.”  

“Rather, it is due to structural inequities in the food system — unequal distribution of resources, poor post-harvest handling and food distribution leading to food waste, lack of access to land, political strife, inequality, climate change and other challenges.” 

She underscores that delegates must address these inequalities and invest in solutions that benefit the world’s most climate and food-insecure communities.

Secondly, Maduekeh underscores the priority to move away from ultra-processed food production. 

“These products (including snacks, drinks and ready-made meals) dominate in high-income countries, but their consumption is also rapidly increasing in low- and middle-income countries. What’s more, the production of ultra-processed foods is anywhere between two to 10 times more energy intensive than producing whole foods.”  

“COP28 must commit to promoting healthy, sustainable and just food environments that support plant-rich diets and minimally processed foods,” concludes Maduekeh.

By Jolanda van Hal