The UAE and several charities at the UN climate summit yesterday offered $777 million in financing for eradicating neglected tropical diseases that are expected to worsen as temperatures climb.
Climate-related factors “have become one of the greatest threats to human health in the 21st century”, COP28 president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber said in a statement.
The pledges, made as the COP28 summit yesterday focused on climate-related health risks, included $100 million from the UAE and another $100m from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Others to announce funds for climate-related health issues included Belgium, Germany and the US Agency for International Development.
The World Bank launched a programme to explore possible support measures for public health in developing countries, where climate-related health risks are especially high.
The burden of tropical diseases will worsen as the world warms, along with other climate-driven health threats including malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.
Many tropical diseases are already easy to treat. River blindness and sleeping sickness, for example, are both endemic to Africa and spread through parasitic worms and flies that are likely to proliferate in a warming world.
More than 120 countries have signed a COP28 declaration acknowledging their responsibility to keep people safe amid global warming.
The declaration made no mention of fossil fuels, the main source of climate-warming emissions, which the Global Climate and Health Alliance called a “glaring omission”.
Activists including physicians in white coats held a small demonstration within the COP28 compound to raise awareness of the issue.
“We are in a lot of trouble,” said Joseph Vipond, an emergency physician from Alberta, Canada. He recalled the case of a child dying from an asthma attack made worse by smoke inhalation from Western Canada’s record wildfires this year. “This is having real world impacts.”
Climate change is also increasing the frequency of dangerous storms and more erratic rainfall.
In September Storm Daniel killed more than 11,000 people in Libya, and last year’s massive flooding in Pakistan fueled a 400 per cent increase in malaria cases across the country, according to the World Health Organisation.
Earlier yesterday, Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates said scientists were working on new treatments for and prevention of mosquito-spread malaria as the rise in temperatures creates more hospitable habitat for the insects to breed.
“We have new tools at the lab level that decimate mosquito populations,” said Gates, whose foundation supports public health research and projects for the developing world.
“These new innovations give us a chance, at a reasonable cost, to make progress.”
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also spoke yesterday, urging reform to the world’s insurance system as another key requirement to keep people safe.
“Right now insurance companies are pulling out of so many places, they’re not insuring homes, they’re not insuring businesses,” Clinton said, addressing a panel on women and climate resiliency.
“It’s people everywhere who are going to be left out with no backup, no insurance for their business or their home.”
l Today is finance day at COP28, which means more funding is likely to be announced for the climate cause.
If that sounds familiar, that is because world leaders and the private sector have spent much of the first few days of this year’s UN climate summit talking about boosting finance for climate action and disaster support.
With world leaders having left the conference in Dubai, expect the finance talk to be a little more detailed and the announcements a little less bold.
Central to the summit’s outcome is how countries will word a final agreement on the future of fossil fuels, and dividing lines are becoming clear.
Away from the main COP28 venue, Saudi Arabia will host a side event called Saudi Green Initiative to promote its clean energy plans.
The UN climate agency may also publish a new draft document showing what progress countries have made so far on the global stocktake – the painstaking process of agreeing a new plan to curb global warming.
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