There was a strong and active public health presence at COP26, which was very welcome. Headline data like 8 million deaths per year from air pollution (almost double the official total global deaths from COVID-19) are now becoming a central part of the climate narrative and help call attention to the interlinkages between health and climate.
Quote from our Roundtable
“The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our social, economic, and health systems is one example in a long series of wider systemic failures, including the systemic failure to make the connection between our own health, healthy ecosystems, our climate, and our socioeconomic and financial structures.”
- Cristina Romanelli, Programme Officer, Biodiversity, Climate Change and Health, WHO
There was major progress on forests and on resources for Indigenous peoples. Over 140 countries pledged to halt and reverse forest-loss and land degradation by 2030 in the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use. Governments and private sector actors pledged ~$19 billion in funding for forest protection, and also $1.7 billion for Indigenous peoples.
Our Coalition welcomes these commitments, but will be watching carefully on whether the funding materializes. The commitments are substantial, but fall short of the $10 billion per year we have been calling for pandemic prevention. We’re also cautious that this is not the first time major commitments on forest have been made, and it will take ongoing advocacy and efforts to hold countries accountable in order to ensure funds do get spent as committed.
Quote from our Roundtable
“With this pandemic, how many billions of real money has been invested into hospitals, into vaccines which are still unequal and unjust. But when we come back to nature, come back to the climate, all the money is only ‘commitments’. We still do not have the hundreds of billions that were committed at Copenhagen, which were meant to be spent by 2020”
- Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, President, Association of Peul Women and Autochthonous Peoples of Chad
We will also continue to advocate for the money to be spent in ways that protect forests, climate whilst also reducing the risk of future pandemics. Spending plans need to reflect the fact that protecting intact forests not only benefits the climate, but also helps protect us from future pandemics by preventing them at their source – the point of disease spillover from animals to humans. They must fund holistic forest management given that maintaining intact forests is essential to avoid serious disturbances to the complex ecosystems that sustain our world.
Interview at COP26 Nature's Newsroom
“We need to focus on investments that prevent pandemics before they start. Forests are hotspots for emerging diseases and forest conversation can help us protect the climate, protect Indigenous rights, and it may forestall the next pandemic.”
- Dr. Ari Bernstein, Interim Director of The Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and leader of the Scientific Task Force for Preventing Pandemics at the Source