Pakistan’s Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman took a lead in loss and damage negotations at COP27.

SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT – In a historic first, delegates to the 27th UN Climate Conference, COP27, agreed Sunday to create a “loss and damage” fund to assist countries suffering from the impact of the climate crisis, concluding a meeting that went into two days of overdrive, with negotiations day and night.

They also added back in language about “the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment” into the final outcome text, which had been dropped from an earlier version.  That reference to a UN resolution approved only in July, was a precedent-setting victory for the World Health Organization and civil society advocates that had campaigned heavily for a more central role for health in climate frameworks.

“History was made today at #COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh as parties agreed to the establishment of a long-awaited loss and damage fund for assisting developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change,” tweeted the COP27 Secretariat at 4 a.m. Sunday morning as delegates from the nearly 200 countries gathered at the meeting regrouped in a long-delayed closing plenary to approve a series of hard-fought agreements.

However, most of the details of how to fund the new mechanism and which countries will be prioritised for receiving the money have still not be finalized and will have to be worked out over the next two years.

Instead of a ‘burning bush, a burning planet’

“COP27 took place not far from Mount Sinai, a site that is central to many faiths and to the story of Moses, or Musa,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the close of the event. “It’s fitting. Climate chaos is a crisis of biblical proportions. The signs are everywhere. Instead of a burning bush, we face a burning planet.”

Guterres said the conference had been driven by two overriding themes – justice and ambition. And along with loss and damage, progress had been made on other fronts as well, he noted: including clarity and a credible roadmap to double adaptation finance; and changing the business models of multilateral development banks and international financial institutions; among others.

EU: Stalled mitigation ambition will lead to heavier loses and more damage

Frans Timmermans, the EU climate negotiator, in closing plenary remarks

While developing countries celebrated the decision to create the fund, the European Union, Australia, Canada and other developed countries, as well as the Alliance of Small Island States, lamented the lack of progress at this year’s conference on mitigation targets that are woefully inadequate to the task of slowing the harm climate change is doing.

Countries seeking more “ambition” on mitigation gave up several battles on the mitigation front, including initiatives to incorporate oil and gas into the language about a “phase down” of coal fossil fuels.  Language about the need to ensure that global emissions peak by 2025 at the latest, and then decline after that, was also rejected by countries that want to keep expanding fossil fuel-based development.

The EU and its allies had sought to link the creation of the loss and damage fund more directly to stronger action on mitigation targets, but ultimately gave that battle up.

“The European Union came to get stronger ambition and we didn’t achieve that,” lamented Frans Timmermans, the lead EU negotiator at the closing plenary, “What we have before us is not enough for people and the planet, to address the yawning gap between climate science and our policies.

“This is a make or break decade,” he added. “To tackle climate change, all financial flows need to go to support low carbon transition. We need far more rapid reductions of climate change.  That is how you reduce loss and damage from climate change. The EU came here to make that happen.  But too many parties are not ready to step up. The mitigation programme allows parties to hide from their responsibilities. There were even attempts to roll back what we did in Glasgow [COP26].  We have all fallen short of our obligations to limit loss and damage from climate change.”

“The deal is not enough on mitigation so we were faced with a dilemma, do we walk away?” Ultimately, he said, the bloc decided not to bloc the historic creation of the loss and damage fund. But now that it has been approved, preparations for a mitigation programme in COP28 “begin today.”

Egyptian bridging proposals finally helped break the ice

Sunday’s early morning agreement on the loss and damage formula came after Saturday’s release of a series of bridging proposals by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who holds the COP Presidency. Those proposals signaled a breakthrough in talks that almost ended in failure.

Speaking to media Saturday morning, and just before the text of the Egyptian proposals was released, Egyptian Foreign Minister and COP President Sameh Shoukry said he believed that the proposals were “balanced” and constituted “a potential breakthrough.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry announces his new bridging initiatives at press conference Saturday morning,

Finalization of an overarching draft agreement was still going on at press time, with parties expected to agreeing on a final version late Sunday morning.

The new draft text states concretely that the COP27 “decides….to establish a fund for responding to loss and damage whose mandate includes a focus on addressing loss and damage.”  The text stipulates that the loss and damage fund would be complementary to existing funding arrangements for mitigation and adaptation.

The draft also sets forth a pathway for operationalizing such a fund, based on the creation of a “transitional committee on the operationalization of the new funding arrangements”, which would make recommendations regarding the precise institutional arrangements, modalities, governance and structures.

That transitional committee would make its recommendations based upon:  a) the development of a synthesis report by the UN Climate Secretariat; b) workshops in 2023 and c)member state and UNFCC inputs.  The transitional committee would review gaps in the current funding landscape, and “the most effective ways in which to address the gaps, especially for the most vulnerable populations and the ecosystems on which they depend,” according to the draft text.

Right to clean, healthy and sustainable environment

The new text also kept in important language stipulating that people have a “right” to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, an unprecedented move that is seen as having great importance among the health community.

Release of the new texts brought shouts of jubilation from some civil society groups. The texts were also welcomed by delegates from developing nations such as Pakistan, a bellwether for opinions in the #G77 group of developing nations.

“We have pushed very hard until the last minute for a loss and damage fund,” tweeted Pakistan’s Sherry Rehman, “a positive outcome is close. Not perfect or optimal, but one that addresses the basic demand of developing nations. I believe if we stick to our positions, stay united, we will make landfall.”

But remained to be seen exactly how developed countries would react to the new texts and formulas, as COP27 delegates headed into an evening plenary session. On Friday, top EU negotiators Frans Timmermans had said that China and other oil-rich economies need to kick into the funding pot.  Even if they were considered developing countries in 1992, they are key emitters now and thus part of the problem.

Text emphasizing that the funding facility would look especially at solutions for “the most vulnerable populations”, was reportedly inserted into the draft to assuage those EU concerns, some observers said. But EU negotiators were also seeking a higher level of ambition on climate mitigation and the 1.5C target, as part of the package deal on loss and damage.  “We cannot accept that 1.5C dies here and today,” tweeted top EU negotiators Frans Timmermans earlier Saturday morning.

That followed Timmerman’s statements on Friday that no deal at COP27 would be better than a bad deal. See related story;

Loss and Damage Negotiations in Overdrive; Right to ‘Healthy Environment’ Drops Out

No progress on fossil fuel phase out or 1.5C

Indeed, there was little in the way of new commitments to keeping warming to the 1.5C target – even as a slew of scientific reports say that the goal is now virtually unattainable.

And the latest draft of the outcome text still fails to refer explicitly to a fossil fuel phase out or phase down for oil and gas. That was something that the EU bloc had reportedly sought to incorporate into the COP27 outcome, building upon the COP26 reference agreed to at Glasgow for a “phasedown” of coal.

Until today, the only language on fossil fuels ever incorporated into a COP document, talks about removing “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies, but not the fuels themselves. That is despite the fact that combustion of fossil fuels is the main driving force behind climate change.  The current draft only preserves the terms agreed to at Glasgow:

28. Calls upon Parties to accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies, and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low-emission energy systems,including by rapidly scaling up the deployment of clean power generation and energy efficiency measures, including accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, while providing targeted support to the poorest and most vulnerable in line with national circumstances and recognizing the need for support towards a just transition;

But bold new language on transformation of the global financial system

On a more positive note, however, this version of the text does include some bold new language on the need for a “transformation” of the global financial system in order to muster the estimated $4 trillion annually that would be needed for economies to transition to cleaner energy and other low carbon technologies.

As compared to past COP decisions focused on the so far unsuccessful efforts to create a mitigation fund of just $100 billion, this year’s text highlights: “that about USD 4 trillion per year needs to be invested in renewable energy up until 2030 to be able to reach net zero emissions by 2050, that, furthermore, a global transformation to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investment of at least USD 4–6 trillion per year.

It furthermore adds that, “delivering such funding will require a transformation of the financial system and its structures and processes, engaging governments, central banks, commercial banks, institutional investors and other financial actors.”

Those words echo powerfully back to the opening days of COP27 when leaders such as Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, hearkening back to her Bridgetown agenda, called for a complete revamp of loan terms for highly indebted low and middle income nations so that they could afford to finance an energy transition.

COP27 Ending tonight?

In light of the progress made over the day, some observers were predicting that COP27 delegates would finally manage to come to an agreement tonight – instead of dragging things out into the next week, as some had predicted on Friday.

But that was by no means certain, either, in light of warnings earlier in the day by the EU’s top climate negotiator Frans Timmermans, that “no deal would be better than a bad deal”.

Meanwhile, the Alliance of Small Island States, issued it’s own warnings against moving too hastily on the sensitive issue of climate loss and damage, which represents an existential threat for low-lying, weather vulnerable nations.

“We’re in for a long night ahead at COP27,” tweeted Arthur Wyns, of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

 

Image Credits: @sherryrehman.

Frans Timmermans, the EU climate negotiator on Friday speaking with reporters as negotiations over the bloc’s proposal on climate loss and damage headed into overtime Friday.

SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT – Michael Terungwa, a solar entrepreneur in Abuja, Nigeria, will know that real progress is being made on climate change when things change in his hometown. 

When the 10-20% in customs and tariffs that he pays for cheap, imported Chinese solar panels are removed; when his customers’  solar purchases are subsidized instead of their purchases of generator oil that run with deafening noise and pollute the air; and when Africa’s richest man begins to invest in renewables – rather than fossil fuels so that he can buy and sell better, quality-assured panels, batteries and other accessories locally.

While Terungwa believes that the outcomes being negotiated by governments at COP27 could and should make a difference, he has seen, from first-hand experience in Nigeria as well as at this year´s COP, the limits of politicians as leaders of change.

He’s hoping that change will still happen. But it’ll likely come in a variety of forms. It may ride on a wave of popular demands for climate action during upcoming Nigerian elections that follow in the wake of devastating floods.  It may come in the form of mounting pressure to reform both regional and global financial institutions that continue to lend more money for fossil fuel projects than renewables, while holding low-income countries shackled with debts.  And eventually, he’s also hoping that the private sector will someday be on right side of change – including Africa’s richest man.  

“If Aliko Dankote decides to invest in renewable energy, in solar, then it will change,” concluded Terungwa, referring to the Nigerian magnate who is currently spending $25 billion to build the Dangote Oil Refinery, the world’s largest, near Lagos. 

Delegates still locked in dispute over loss and damage

Michael Terungwa runs a solar social enterprise in Abuja, and attended COP27 as the member of a Nigerian civil society group.

Terungwa spoke to Health Policy Watch in the waning days of the COP27 conference as delegates battled frantically over the terms of a proposal to create a new fund for countries’ loss and damage from climate change. 

Over the past two days, discussions have centered around a recent European Union proposal to support such a fund, but only if it is also linked to stronger commitments on climate mitigation, and receives financial backing from China, now the world´s second largest emitter, as well as Gulf states that have grown rich on oil exports.

Delegates also continued to debate the framing of the Paris commitment to the 1.5C limit for global warming. But as talks entered overtime on Friday evening, the draft outcome language now circulating was stock text, lacking the reference to “urgent” that had been injected into a G20 communique issued earlier in the week. 

The latest draft text also waters down the COP26 commitment of Glasgow to “phase out inefficient fossil field subsidies,” calling instead for countries to “phase out and rationalize” such subsidies, leaving more diplomatic wiggle room for countries to justify fossil fuel investments that lock the economies into carbon intensive development.

Language refers in passing to the “right to health”, a word that was not even mentioned in the outcome document of the COP26 Glasgow conference.  But an earlier reference to peoples’ right to the “highest attainable standard of physical and mental health” in the climate context had fallen out of the latest text circulating Friday evening – something that would have been a precedent-setting nod to the terms of the World Health Organization´s 1948 constitution.   

Without loss and damage, we cannot achieve Agenda 2030

Youths were a visible presence at the largest climate conference ever, with 35,000 participants.

Like many other civil society participants Health Policy Watch spoke to throughout the week, Terungwa was critical of the continued fence-sitting of governments on fossil fuels development, whether from leaders in the global north or south.  He supports a strong commitment to the 1.5C goal aligned with a halt to new fossil fuel investments of almost any kind. 

But he also was concerned that the lack of a strong outcome on the charged issue of loss and damage would ultimately jinx the prospects for sustainable development, condemning millions of people in climate vulnerable regions like Nigeria to an ever more precarious future.

“With no strong commitment and possible outcome as COP27 comes to an end, I am very much afraid that the thousands of Nigerians who were displaced as a result of the recent floods and are currently in internally displaced camps, will not benefit from Loss and Damage,” said Terungwa, whose enterprise also provides IDP camps with solar electricity, and attended COP as part of the Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation (GIFSEP).

“I can tell you confidently that without loss and damage, we cannot achieve Agenda 2030 or the Sustainable development Goals, because all 17 goals are impacted once there is a climate disaster.  

“The sad reality is that those responsible for this crisis know exactly what to do, but sadly they are not doing it. We continue to call for justice on this matter.”

Debate over China’s participation in the fund  

Negotiations in Glasgow at COP26 almost collapsed over the question of coal. The fulcrum in Sharm el-Sheikh is loss and damage – with debates likely to extend over the entire weekend, if not beyond.

The European Union’s agreement on Thursday to include loss and damage in the outcome document was supposed to be a breakthrough.  However, the EU`s “final offer” Friday morning came with tough conditions attached. 

 “We can live with a fund, but under two very important conditions: the fund should be targeted to the most vulnerable, and it should also have a broad funding base,” the bloc´s chief climate negotiator, Frans Timmermans, vice president of the European Commission, told the press on Friday.

Translated, that means China and oil-rich Gulf nations, which may have been considered developing states when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was created in 1992, but are large CO2 emitters today, should also contribute financially. That is a position which China has so far rejected. 

“There we have a disagreement,” Timmermans said. The money should come from a “broad funder base” and be based on the economic realities “in 2022, not 1992.”

Without agreement, other aspects of the negotiations may crumble

COP 27
On 21 September 2022 people wait in the midday sun for the water troughs to fill with water in Marsabit County, Kenya. With an ongoing drought in the Horn of Africa, the spring is the only available water source for the whole community.

A second draft of an outcome text shared by the Egyptian Presidency Friday evening still contained placeholder text for loss and damage, but no clear language suggesting a way forward on the thorny issue.  Meanwhile, media reports said negotiators were frantically debating a last-ditch EU proposal on mechanisms for creating the fund within a two year time frame.. 

“As the hours tick by, there is still time for wealthy nations at COP27 to agree to the long-overdue Loss and Damage finance,” said Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “Without agreement, all other aspects of the negotiations may crumble.”

In his comments Friday, Timmermans said the bloc’s resistance to the idea of a fund was not about funding commitments, but efficiency.

 “My reluctance with a fund is I know from past experience that it takes time before such a fund is established, and even more time until such a fund is filled,” he said. “I truly believe we could move faster by adapting existing instruments.” The United States shares EU concerns about the inefficiency of a fund, preferring a “mosaic” of financial arrangements. It has yet to comment on the EU’s new proposal. 

The EU proposal hinges on the condition that countries agree to “a package deal with serious plans on mitigation” including “an agreement to peak emissions in 2025” and update NDCs accordingly, Timmermans said further.

Tensions around the right of developing nations to continue to exploit their fossil fuel resources in the name of development remain a sticking point in negotiations. But the EU stance is clear. 

“If we don’t seriously reduce our emissions, there is no amount of money on this planet that can address the issue of loss and damage,” Timmermans said. “This is our final offer. I thank all our member states for the courage to go this far, but this is it.”

1.5°C’s dying breath

Global mean temperature increase as recorded in the 2022 WMO State of the Global Climate provisional report.

A week before COP27 began, the United Nations Environment Programme’s Adaptation Report found “no credible pathway” to limiting warming to the 1.5°C limit. 

The latest draft document still “reaffirms the resolution to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”. 

But the language is lukewarm at best, lacking the more strident tone of the recent G20 communique, which stated only last week that “The resolve to try and limit the temperature increase to 1.5C is urgent.” 

Not only that, Friday’s backslides around fossil fuel subsidies, in subtle but significant ways.  The COP26 Glasgow document calls for the “phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.”

The COP27 draft language adds a single word laden with meaning. It calls to “phase out and rationalize inefficient fossil field subsidies,” creating wiggle room for signatories to justify investment in new fossil fuel infrastructure, and deepening their reliance on oil and natural gas. 

This in contrast to sharp warnings by not only climate scientists, but also the International Energy Agency, which has said no new oil, gas or coal development can be undertaken if the world is serious about addressing the climate crisis. 

Health makes its first appearance in draft text – then fades 

WHO humanitarian response after cyclone Idai in Mozambique. More frequent flooding and droughts are devasting Africa and Asia.

Health has long been an overlooked dimension of climate discussions despite its deadly consequences. Air pollution claims 7 million lives every year, and 65% of the pollution from human activities is from fossil fuels.

The threats of heat stress, sea level rise and drought threaten the health of older people, children and outdoor workers, as well as food and water security of over a third of the world’s current population, putting them at risk of forced migration if temperature rise is not curbed.

Determined to work health into a COP27 agenda set to define the world’s response to the climate crisis, the global health community arrived at Sharm el-Sheikh en masse. 

The WHO COP27 pavilion was packed with crowds throughout a two-week marathon of sessions on climate and health.

And when the initial draft outcome text was circulated Thursday by the Egyptian Presidency, those efforts seemed to have paid off. 

Text on ‘highest attainable standard’ for health is dropped

(Second from left) Maria Neira, WHO’s director of the Department of Climate, Environment and Health at WHO’s COP27 pavilion

The draft text referred to the need to ensure the “highest attainable standard of physical and mental health” in the world’s response to the climate crisis – language hearkening back the WHO’s 1948 Constitution for the first time ever in a climate document. 

But when the second draft of the outcome document was made public Friday night, that reference had disappeared. 

Another passage affirming “the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right” was also removed. That passage recalled a milestone United Nations General Assembly Resolution passed in September 2022.

The notion of health as a human right has not been completely lost.

The latest draft outcome document still calls on signatories to “respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity.”

Healthy forests: acknowledged but not funded

Oil and gas projects in Africa are set to quadruple; 90% of projectsthat overlap with sensitive forests, are in the Congo Basin, the world´s second largest rainforest.

So far, the reference to “healthy forests” and their role they serve in “climate regulation, biodiversity protection, food and water security, soil fertility and limiting forced migration” has remained intact in the latest draft. 

But the text also fails to include any provision to compensate developing countries for forest preservation – ignoring calls from the 50-member Coalition for Rainforest Nations that say finance is critical to halting the deforestation of critical ecosystems. 

Although Brazil´s President-elect Lula da Silva  vowed to end deforestation of the Latin American rainforest in a speech earlier this week, it is clear he will have to balance those promises against powerful economic interests at home.  

The Democratic Republic of Congo, meanwhile, has made no such vow. Rather, it has put large areas of the Congo Basin rainforest up for auction as oil and gas blocs. That would not only erode the integrity of the world’s second largest rain forest, but also unleash dangerous quantities of methane buried in extensive peatlands.

Without strong countervailing financial incentives, it´s unlikely that the DRC will back down.   

“The role of forests and peatlands was removed from the cover decision,” Eve Bazaiba, DRC vice prime minister told reporters on Thursday. “So we are asking ourselves, what are we doing here?”

The Children Are the Adults in the Room 

Amid the chaos overtaking the conference Friday morning, one voice broke through the noise. That voice belongs to Nakeeyat Dramani, a 10-year-old from Ghana speaking on behalf of her country’s delegation during plenary. 

“As we sit here, the fate of the most vulnerable will be the fate of the world,” she told a room of attendees and world leaders thirty to sixty years her senior. “Do not leave our communities exposed.”

Dramani’s address was a reminder of the power a youthful perspective injects into the climate conversation. 

“Remember yourself at my age,” she asked the delegates. “If all of you were to be young people like me, wouldn’t you have already agreed to do what is needed to save our planet?”

Sadly, that’s not the case.

Image Credits: @TimmermansEU, E Fletcher/Health Policy Watch, WHO Africa, World Metereological Organization, WHO, Rainforest Foundation and Earth Insights, 2022.

E-cooking
A three-stone coal cook stove in Kisumu, Kenya.

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt – Electric cooking is becoming more attainable for households in Africa, and BioLPG, a climate-neutral alternative to propane, could be a cost-effective replacement to the fossil fuel variant for household cooking in some developing countries, say experts at COP27, the global climate talks. 

The spoke at a panel session on tackling the health and climate crisis through clean cooking solutions, hosted by the World Health Organization at COP27.

The emerging potential to harness energy-efficient electric cooking technologies to clean up pollution from charcoal and wood stoves used by hundreds of millions of poor households offered one bright star in the mostly dismal news about climate trends and deadlocked negotiations, emerging out of this years UN Climate Conference.

For years, clean cooking solutions have received more lip service than cash from the energy and finance ministers who hold the purse strings of energy investment. Even in countries like Nigeria, which are rich in fossil fuels, governments have been far more intent on extracting oil and gas for export than expanding modern energy access at home. 

Despite major progress over the past decade, some 775 million people worldwide still have no access to electricity. And a whopping 2.6 billion people still cook on the most rudimentary wood, charcoal or biomass stoves that emit high levels of smoke directly into homes, said the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Heather Adair Rohani at the session on “tackling the health and climate crisis through clean cooking” solutions. 

Household smoke is both an agent of climate change and air pollution. It kills an estimated 3.2 million people annually including about 237,000 children under the age of five who are more prone to pneumonia as a result of their smoke exposure. Among older people who spend much of their day next to cooking fires, deadly cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, as well as cataracts and other complaints, are a frequent outcome, Adair Rohani explained.

Inefficient cook-stoves and heating systems are also a leading source of excessive CO2 emissions, and the black carbon emitted by wood and biomass stoves is a short-lived climate pollutant that accelerates snow and glacier melt. Finally, wood gathering and charcoal production not only contributes to deforestation but also consumes excessive time for women and girls, detracting from work and education and putting them at physical risk.

Household smoke is a longstanding health and climate issue

The WHO has long viewed household cooking emissions as a critical threat to global health.

As a key impediment to women’s and children’s health and gender equality, household smoke has been an issue that WHO has championed since the early days of its involvement in climate issues – long before the global health agency began to weigh in forcefully on more sensitive topics like fossil fuels.   

Meanwhile, some of the clean cook-stove solutions that held promise a decade ago have not proven to be long-term solutions. Some “improved” biomass cook-stoves may reduce pollution emissions, but not enough to make them safe for daily use inside homes.

And certain renewable cooking solutions, like solar cook-stoves, have been met with social and cultural resistance in some settings, limiting their potential for scale-up. In many countries, large-scale government investments in clean cooking have simply failed to pan out, leaving the work to non-profit organizations, with a mixed bag of solutions and approaches.

New horizon created by improved electricity access

Despite the still yawning access gaps, the number of people without electricity in their homes declined from over 1.3 billion people in 2012 to 754 million in 2021, before rising slightly in 2022. And renewable electricity is much more affordable than it was a decade ago.

New solutions like e-cooking, which a few years ago were accessible only in middle and high-income countries, are now within reach, said Ed Brown, who leads the UK-backed Modern Energy Cooking Services initiative (MECS).

“E-cooking is becoming more feasible around African urban centres as more people gain access to reliable electricity,” he said. More energy-efficient electric induction stoves and cooking tools like electric rice cookers, are also helping that transition.

In east African countries like Kenya and Uganda, and Asian countries like Nepal, the proportion of people with sufficient electricity access to shift to e-cooking is growing, Brown said, adding, “We´re also watching developments in Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi.”

In Kenya, over 70% electricity access

Geothermal
Located in Hell’s Gate National Park, Kenya, the Olkaria III complex is the first geothermal power station in Africa.

In Kenya, over 70% of the population now has electricity access. In Uganda it’s over 40%, and in Nepal, over 95%. 

If just 40% of Kenya´s grid-connected homes currently using charcoal for cooking can be induced to shift to e-cooking by 2030, that could yield over $600 million in climate, health and ecosystem benefits over the first five years of electrification, for $110 million in costs. This would transition an estimated 700,000 households to clean cooking sources, Brown said. 

Through WHO’s interactive assessment tool, BARHAP, the team estimates that the upfront costs of the shift to e-cooking in terms of more efficient stoves or appliances would be paid back within 9 months. It would also save: 

  • 1,203 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) a year avoided;
  • 191million hours/yr of women’s time saved (272hrs/per household/ year);
  • 1.9 million tonnes/yr CO2eq emissions reduced;
  • 400,000 tons a year in unsustainable wood harvest reduced;

But e-cooking is hardly a panacea: some 60% of people in sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to electricity.


The drive to electrify Africa is gaining momentum as part of the Climate and UN Sustainable Energy for All agenda and initiatives by the countries themselves. 

Despite the push by many African leaders – backed by powerful oil and gas interests – to expand their fossil fuel production, green electrification is now much cheaper over the long term, at about two cents a kilowatt hour, Brown said. In some countries, it is also cheaper than charcoal, a resource often harvested unsustainably. 

Even Kenya and Uganda, which have invested far more heavily in fossil fuels than solar power, have put significant sums towards hydroelectric and geothermal electricity power generation. Renewables are now the backbone of their domestic electricity grids, generating 71% of Kenya´s power and 92% of Uganda’s. 

First ever e-cooking strategy in Kenya

Ed Brown, leader of the UK-backed Modern Energy Cooking Services initiative (MECS), speaking at COP27.

Supporting a shift to e-cooking requires a mix of measures. These range from subsidies to households for the purchase of more efficient stoves or portable cookers, to governments reducing household electricity tariffs to a level where e-cooking is more affordable than alternatives, particularly charcoal. 

“In Uganda, the government has introduced a reduced tariff for cooking. Up to a certain usage level, the price is heavily subsidized, and they’ve raised the ceiling on that,” Brown said. In Kenya, the UK-backed MECS initiative is supporting the government in the development of its first-ever e-cooking strategy.

In nearby Malawi, a new Global Green Grid Initiative, launched at last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, appears set to finance the development of Africa’s first national electric grid to be powered primarily by solar energy. The project, announced last month by the Global Alliance for Energy and the Planet – backed by Rockefeller and IKEA foundations – aims to scale up electricity access from a meagre 18% to 100% by 2030 by developing mega and mini-solar grids.

“It is true there is still significant investment in fossil fuels,” Brown concedes, reflecting on Africa’s ‘dash for gas’ that has been the talk of this year’s COP27.  “There are discussions and moves afoot for changing that. I think that as we emerge out of the energy crisis [brought on by the invasion of Ukraine], electrification will continue to get greener rather than browner.”

BioLPG – the green version of a popular fossil fuel

MECS has also been looking at how biogas production could be industrially scaled up in a number of flagship African countries with investment into bioLPG (Liquefied petroleum fuel), a chemically altered version of biogas that is the equivalent of propane. 

An assessment by the Global LPG Alliance, produced in collaboration with MECS and published before last year’s COP26, estimated that some 1.65 million households in Rwanda, Ghana and Kenya could be supplied with bioLPG for their cooking needs, cost-effectively, through the development of just five large scale municipal and farm waste to gas projects. 

Multiple health and climate benefits

The health and climate implications of this shift go well beyond the production of cleaner and greener cooking fuel. 

From a health standpoint, both municipal waste and manure are sources of dangerous pathogens and disease, particularly in fast-developing cities where waste management is weak. and these pathogens are rendered harmless during the process of anaerobic digestion that produces biogas, leaving only a slurry bi-product that is also a rich fertilizer and thus useful for food production. 

Municipal waste is also the third most potent source of global methane emissions from human activity, after oil and gas extraction and agriculture/livestock. Together, municipal waste and agro waste generate some 45% of methane emissions from human activities. Methane has 20 times the climate warming potential of CO2 over the first 20 years of its lifecycle – as well as being a precursor of ozone – which reduces crop growth and is yet another air pollution risk.  

While biogas is carbon neutral, bioLPG undergoes a stage of chemical processing that enables it to be pressurized, bottled and transported, like propane. Its carbon footprint is slightly higher than that of biogas, but its climate impact is still a fraction of LPG made out of fossil fuels. 

Waste to bioLPG and bioLNG is already happening in the global north

A year after Glasgow, MECS is now in the initial stages of making a more refined estimate of the economic, political and logistical feasibility for two of the five pilot bioLPG projects assessed earlier in Kenya and Uganda. 

Across Europe and North America, a movement to convert biogas generated from municipal waste and manure into commercial products of value to consumers is already well underway.

In North America, the efforts are largely focused on transforming raw biogas into renewable natural gas (rNG), the chemical equivalent of fossil fuel, which can be integrated into the continent’s extensive natural gas infrastructure used in heating, electricity production and vehicles. Case studies from Toronto and Minneapolis, Minnesota, among other cities, were showcased at a biogas panel session Thursday, at COP27, by the World Biogas Association. 

In Europe, where LPG is more common, fuel distributors are shifting to bioLPG in line with European Union goals. Brown noted that leading UK LPG distributors aim to convert their infrastructure fully to bioLPG. 

Tools to assess choices in light of health and climate benefits  

One of the key innovations that WHO has created for policymakers is an interactive tool that supports a cost-benefit analysis of different household energy scale-up options by policymakers and practitioners in order to quantify the trade-offs in hard numbers. 

That tool, known as BARHAP, is what allowed Brown and his team to estimate both the payback period of investment in e-cooking in Kenya, and the savings in excess morbidity and mortality, women’s labour, and climate emissions. 

“The interactive tool, which is available online, accounts for the household expenditure, the government expenditures for cleanup, looking at different interventions, the climate impacts, the time loss [in fuel gathering], etc.” said Rohani. “It helps countries to see what the different interventions are, and what can you expect in terms of that cost-benefit from a different set of different solutions.”

That tool is just one part of a Clean Household Energy Solutions Toolkit (CHEST) developed by WHO over the past several years. The toolkit contains six modules in total, including resources for local stakeholder mapping, engaging the community, monitoring evaluation, standards and testing, and communications.

The toolkit aims to support policymakers and practitioners in reaching Sustainable Development Goal 7: access to “clean, affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” by 2030, which includes access to clean household fuels and technologies.

Assessing solutions in context

E-cooking
Replacing outdated stoves could improve the lives of millions.

“The toolkit allows policymakers to assess solutions that may be best suited to their geography, economies, culture and communities while yielding optimal reductions in air pollution and health benefits,” said Adair-Rohani.

The WHO has long championed the health benefits of clean cooking in terms of reduced air pollution exposures for women and children as well as savings in women and girls’ labour, and the “new narrative” of clean cooking is also building more on the economic benefits of “modernizing” – something that may appeal more to finance and energy ministers as well as to consumers, says Brown. 

“While progress was being made on ‘access to modern energy’ [in the form of electricity], the separation of cooking was perpetuating problems,” he said. 

Health advocates are shifting their pitch around clean cookstoves to capitalize on the “aspiration for modernisation, cleanliness and convenience”  which resonates among energy ministers and consumers to sell solutions that ultimately improve public health:

“Now we need to go to the folks that are putting money into electrification, and make sure that every electrification grid extension program that they still have is a clean cooking component.”

Image Credits: World Bank, IEA 2022 , IRENA.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been marred by uneven access to vaccines and other life-saving products.

Regional production of vaccines and other pandemic-related products – and sharing the technical know-how to enable this – features strongly in the much-anticipated first draft of the global pandemic treaty proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to guide future pandemics.

WHO member states will be briefed on the conceptual “zero-sum” draft on Friday in preparation for the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body’s (INB) meeting from 5-7 December, which will kick off formal negotiations.

The draft advocates for regional and country “strategic stockpiles” of pandemic response products, particularly active pharmaceutical ingredients that could be facilitated by “multilateral and regional purchasing mechanisms”.

It also suggests “international consolidation hubs, as well as regional staging areas” to ensure the streamlined transportation of supplies.

Intellectual property hot potato

Intellectual property is the most obvious hot potato. The draft offers four proposals on IP, all of which recognise the negative impact IP protection can have on prices. 

Three proposals affirm the importance of protecting IP while the more radical fourth option simply recognises that IP poses a “threat and barriers to the full realization of the right to health and to scientific progress for all, particularly the effect on prices, which limits access options and impedes independent local production and supplies”.

Various proposals are included on the TRIPS waiver, with some recognition of the need for “time-bound waivers of the protection of intellectual property rights that are a barrier to manufacturing of pandemic response products during pandemics”.

The importance of “trilateral cooperation” between the WHO, World Trade Organization and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on IP, public health, and trade, is also highlighted.

Protestors in New York City protesting against pharmaceutical companies’ profiteering.

Public funding and price disclosures

The draft also proposes measures to “encourage, incentivize, and facilitate” the private sector’s “voluntary transfer of technology and know-how through collaborative initiatives and multilateral mechanisms”. 

But where there has been “public financing of research and development for pandemic response products”, the draft proposes that measures need to be adopted to ensure “more equitable access and affordability” of these products.

These could involve “conditions on distributed manufacturing, licensing, technology transfer and pricing policies”.

In addition, public financing of R&D could result in “measures to limit indemnity or confidentiality clauses in commercial pandemic response product contracts between countries and manufacturers”.

Secret deals were a cause for serious concern for many countries and health activists at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when vaccines were in short supply and being sold at different prices without any transparency.

The draft also proposes that “promoters of research for pandemic response products assume part of the risk (liability) when the products or supplies are in the research phase, and that making access to such pandemic response products or supplies conditional on a waiver of such liability is discouraged”.

Pfizer and Moderna in particular made countries sign onerous indemnity clauses before they agreed to supply them with COVID-19 vaccines.

‘A shopping list,’ says IFPMA

However, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) has already indicated that it is against the draft, saying in a statement on Friday that it “does not meet the test of preserving what worked well and it is questionable whether the proposals to address the shortcomings faced in the current pandemic would work”.

“The text, while containing elements which can form a good basis to be better prepared for future pandemics, reads as a shopping list of multiple agendas and ideas which have been brought together in one document and therefore lack coherence,” added the IFPMA.

“If the draft were implemented as written today it would most likely undermine rather than facilitate our collective ability to rapidly develop and scale up counter measures and ensure its equitable access.”

It believes that a more constructive approach would be to identify and build on what worked well during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as “the R&D ecosystem”.

“The private sector developed multiple safe and effective vaccines and treatments against COVID-19 and scaled up their production in record time,” said the IFPMA. “We need to make sure that the IP-based innovation ecosystem is not undermined.  Innovation resulting in safe and effective vaccines in record time and scaling up manufacturing to historic levels involving hundreds of voluntary partnerships leaning on the capabilities available around the globe worked, together with rapid pathogen sharing were key elements of the rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Areas of improvement include health systems strengthening and resilience and the equitable distribution of the vaccines, “which was hampered by resourcing challenges both financial and logistical, as well as the free movement of supplies and vaccines”, added the IFPMA.

 Sharing pathogens

The draft also advocates for “early, safe, transparent and rapid sharing of samples and genetic sequence data of pathogens” – a measure supported by the pharmaceutical industry – but simultaneously calls for “the fair and equitable sharing of benefits”.

In addition to international and regional anti-pandemic measures, the draft advocates that member states increase domestic funding, particularly to support strong primary health care and universal health coverage.

Intensive process 

Since the WHO’s special health assembly resolved to negotiate a pandemic ‘instrument’ almost a year ago, the INB has engaged in an intensive consultation process.

The draft is the result of inputs from member states, regional meetings, relevant stakeholders, two public hearings that were open to anyone, informal, focused consultations and two INB meetings. 

Any areas covered by the International Health Regulations (2005) are not contained in the draft. 

Mohga Kammal Yanni

Responding to the draft text, Mohga Kammal Yanni, policy co-lead for the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said that it “shows that negotiations are at a crossroads”. 

“A treaty could break with the greed and inequality that has plagued the global response to COVID-19, HIV/AIDS and other pandemics. Or, it could tie future generations to the same disastrous outcomes,” said Yanni.

“The treaty gives world leaders a chance to prevent this inequality through increasing the pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity of developing countries and sharing of technology and know-how. It needs to mandate this sharing and commit countries to waiving intellectual property rules for relevant products in future pandemics. This would avoid the current inequitable access to essential medical products needed to deal with pandemics.”

The zero draft will be discussed at the third INB meeting in December, and an even more intensive process of negotiations will begin.

The INB will submit a progress report on its deliberations to the 76th World Health Assembly in 2023, and the final draft for consideration at the 77th World Health Assembly in 2024.

* This story was updated to include the IFPMA response.

Image Credits: Zhang Meifang/Twitter, People's Vaccine Alliance.

Pakistan flood relief 2022
Pakistan’s flood-affected families receiving relief packages from RFI. 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Shujaat Ali Khan’s community in the Swat valley of Pakistan was devastated by recent flash floods, leaving thousands displaced and destroying infrastructure and crops. 

“Land in the area was completely destroyed and the community needed urgent support,” said Khan, who wanted to help his community.

He found that climate activists from the social enterprise organisation, Resilient Future International (RFI), were more responsive than the government.

“We managed food package deliveries at micro-level to the flood-affected farmers in Swat with the collaboration of RFI to help people in this difficult time,” said Khan.

In early 2022, a report from the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), described Pakistan as a climate hotspot, in the top ten climate-impacted countries in the world.

“In South Asia, extreme climatic conditions are threatening food security; thus, agro-based economies, such as those of India and Pakistan, are the most vulnerable to climate change,” the report said.

A few months later, the report’s words were borne out by floods that killed some 1400 people  and left about one-third of the country’s land under water, affecting about 33 million people from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the far north to Baluchistan, Punjab, and Sindh province in the far south.

Last week at the COP27 climate change talks in Egypt, Pakistan´s Prime Minister, Muhammed Shehbaz Sharif, made an urgent appeal for loss and damage funds to assist his country to recover from the August floods, pointing out that Pakistan had a tiny carbon footprint but was suffering from emissions from wealthy countries.

“Estimated damage and loss have exceeded $30 billion and this is despite our very low carbon footprint. We became a victim of something with which we had nothing to do,” said Sharif, speaking about the August flooding.

Government unprepared

Pakistan’s government was unprepared for the scale of the flood, and NGOs and social enterprises have stepped into the vacuum. 

In the case of RFI, supporting immediate disaster relief is also a means of raising more awareness about the risks of climate change and the benefits of early action. 

The RFI was founded in October 2017 by Aftab Alam Khan, who has over 20 years’ experience in developing climate resilient and people-centric solutions in Asia, Africa, Latin America. 

Khan, a graduate from the University of Wales Swansea in the United Kingdom, has advised the governments of Pakistan, Indonesia, South Africa, as well as the G-20 and G-77 on sustainable and pro-poor policies.

RFI provides research, training and consultancy services on climate-resilient, people-centric solutions. Khan is also currently designing two academic courses on tackling climate change.

In an interview with Health Policy Watch, Khan said his enterprise aims to develop the capacity of the communities, media, and entrepreneurs to face the challenges of climate change through initiatives in research, training, monitoring and evaluation. 

 “I have worked globally on climate resilience for the past 20 years, but I realized that limited or no work on crucial areas needed for climate resilient future in Pakistan has been done,” he said.

A major focus, he adds, is building youth capacity, including the integration of climate change into the university curriculum through short courses, internships, and online sessions – as well as media engagement. 

Building local networks

During the flood emergency, however, RFI also swung into action, mobilizing its platform and student network to respond to the most immediate needs of the crisis – the distribution of relief packages of food and other essential goods.

The RFI provided relief support in Swat with TechMark Agro Volunteers and extended its support to local activists in fundraising and connecting national and international relief organizations with potential fundraising opportunities.

While many organizations were focused on distributing mosquito repellents to flood-affected people, RFI provided early and indigenous solutions and suggested local people also use inexpensive local herbal oil to save them from mosquito bites. 

And at the same time, says Khan, RFI used its platform to assist local activists on how to highlight their local needs and issues.

He said RFI has brought climate to a practical level by various means by promoting climate resilient agriculture, mentoring youth on importance of learning, conducting research about climate challenges, and also training journalists to play role in building mass awareness on climate issues and the like.

Flood Affected farmers of Swat, Khyber Pakthunkhwa describing their damages to standing crops to relief activists

Fostering student climate research  

Over the past five years, the organization has also helped students to frame and develop research on local climate-related issues that have been understudied until now. 

Lahore environmental sciences student Meharwar Uppal says that she got inspiration and guidance from the RFI website, which offers Urdu translations of the IPCC findings as well as analyses of the government’s National Climate Change Policy.

Uppal says that this helped her shape her final year research project on heat waves in Pakistan at Lahore College Women’s University.

Despite such efforts, there is still a long way to go before Pakistani educators and decision-makers become more engaged in the climate challenge, says Khan. 

Too many leaders and top officials in education and government prefer to stick to their day-to-day routine, rather than taking on more strategic challenges in an area that still seems futuristic to many.  

“I hope the current floods will change that trend,” said Khan.

In the wake of the 2022 floods, RFI is launching a series of seminars with university students, which it aims to lead to the drafting of a public letter to the planned UNFCCC Loss and Damage Finance Facility, demanding aid. 

Dr Iqra Ashfaq, RFI’s youth ambassador, said that she didn’t realize the importance of climate change until she joined the organization.  

“I learned what climate change actually is and the impacts it’s causing on our planet. I learned how climate change is a whole cycle of events initiated and accelerated due to our actions and behavior,” said Iqra, who recently qualified as a medical doctor.

She said engagement with climate resilient organizations is helping youth to learn the magnitude of effects caused by excessive carbon emissions into the atmosphere and what are the ways by which such effects could be managed and tackled through mitigation and adaption.

“After realizing the seriousness of climate threat, I am looking forward to conduct research correlating climate change and health care in order to find out solutions for common people,” said Ashfaq.

Image Credits: Resilient Future International.

vaccine trials
Three Ebola vaccine candidates will be tested in Uganda soon.

Clinical trials on three Ebola vaccine candidates for the Sudan strain of the virus are due to start soon in Uganda, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

“I’m pleased to announce that a WHO committee of external experts has evaluated three candidate vaccines and agreed that all three should be included in the planned trial in Uganda. WHO and Uganda’s Minister of Health have considered and accepted the committee’s recommendation,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a media briefing on Wednesday.

Doses of the vaccine candidates are set to arrive in Uganda next week. 

Uganda has been reeling from an Ebola outbreak, with 163 confirmed and probable cases and 77 confirmed and probable deaths. 

Tedros expressed appreciation for the Ugandan government’s efforts in containing the outbreak: “The government’s efforts to respond to the outbreak have slowed transmission in most districts, and two districts have not reported any case for 42 days, indicating the virus is no longer present in those districts.”

Too late for trials?

However, with the outbreak in decline, it might mean that it will be hard to test the vaccines.

The clinical trials will be conducted by a group of organisations including the WHO, Uganda’s Makerere University, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI) and Gavi, the global vaccine alliance.

In a joint statement earlier this month, the WHO said that while the vaccines were developed by the Lung Institute at Makerere University, WHO, CEPI and GAVI will ensure that sufficient doses are available for the clinical trials. 

“We can confirm that we have received written confirmation from the developers that a sufficient number of doses will be available for the clinical trial and beyond if necessary,” Dr Ana Maria Henao-Restrepo, the co-lead of R&D blueprint for epidemics at WHO. 

While Uganda’s outbreak appears to be largely contained and its caseload is declining, Henao-Restrepo said that it is difficult to predict the evolution of an outbreak. 

She pointed out that when the Ça Suffit (French for Ebola) trial on Ebola was conducted in Guinea, researchers were also unsure about whether enough evidence would be generated and if it was too late to conduct trials. 

“It’s better for us to work towards generating the evidence and put all our efforts on that rather than trying to second guess the evolution of the outbreak,” said Henao-Restrepo.

Dr Mike Ryan, the executive director of WHO’s health emergencies programme, said that there was no time for “if onlys”. 

“We’re making these investments, and if we don’t get to the required numbers, we’ve built the collaboration, we’ve built the platform to do this,” he stressed, adding that the Ça Suffit trial in Guinea had also helped to build the necessary infrastructure to prevent future outbreaks and increase protection. 

Apart from the three vaccine candidates, a separate group of experts have also chosen two therapeutics for clinical trials, which are under review. 

India’s Covaxin still suspended by WHO

Controversy over Covaxin is unresolved.

The WHO has still not resumed supplies of Covaxin, India’s indigenous vaccine against COVID-19, the global body confirmed. 

In March, the WHO inspected the manufacturing site of Bharat Biotech, which produces Covaxin and found serious irregularities in the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) at the site. 

This resulted in the global health agency suspending the supply of the vaccine through UN’s procurement agencies in April, stating the company had altered the GMP after it received the Emergency Use Licence (EUL) from WHO. 

India’s journalists have consistently questioned the discrepancies in the Covaxin clinical trial data since it was released in 2020. However, these questions have always been met with silence from the manufacturer and the Indian Council of Medical Research.

There were several irregularities in Covaxin’s clinical trials and that the country’s drug regulator did not clamp down on the discrepancies, according to a recent investigation by Stat News. 

The report also quoted company executives acknowledging their mistakes. “They also argued they faced “political” pressure to get a vaccine out of the laboratory door as quickly as possible, but denied taking any shortcuts. And they insisted the steps taken to speed the trial were vetted during discussions with regulators,” the report added. 

 Dr Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for drug access, vaccines and pharmaceuticals, said that the WHO is yet to receive a corrective and prevention action plan (CAPA) from Bharat Biotech. Once they received and reviewed the CAPA, further steps would be taken on the suspension. 

Image Credits: Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash.

Modern hospitals consume a huge amount of energy.

The healthcare sector is responsible for over 5% of global carbon emissions, double the amount of the aviation sector. But there is a way for healthcare actors to reduce this while at the same maintaining the quality of care in developed countries and expanding access to healthcare in developing countries. 

This is according to panellists at a recent event on “Healthcare and climate change: Victim or perpetrator hosted by the  Graduate Institute’s Global Heath Center.   

Sonia Roschnik, executive director at the Geneva Sustainability Centre, said that how the planet is faring is inherent to people’s health. The centre, which opened this year, has put greening healthcare delivery for better health and a healthier climate at the core of its agenda.  

“We can’t have healthy people on a sick planet, but of course, we also can’t have a healthy planet with sick people,” Roschnik said, adding that reducing the environmental impacts of health care will contribute to reducing the burden of disease and social inequities.

Sonia Roschnik, executive director of the Geneva Sustainability Centre, Bruno Jochum, executive director of the Climate Action Accelerator and Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

Reducing emissions by smarter drug procurement

“There are some things that are healthcare specific that if the healthcare sector doesn’t do nobody else is going to do,” Roschnik added.

“For instance, one that is often quoted is anaesthetic gases. Some of those gases are 100 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and actually, there are other ways of delivering that care.” 

One of these is nitrous oxide, which has a climate warming effect 300 times that of CO2, but new technologies have recently been put developed to safely capture and reuse such anaesthetic gases, including a Newcastle, UK hospital  last year.  

Bruno Jochum, founder and executive director of The Climate Action Accelerator, said that mid-level health facilities can do a lot to help decarbonize. He described his group’s work as an initiative “getting organizations to really adopt by themselves science-based targets without waiting for policy change.”

“Often hospitals are the first employer of any territory,” he noted. “They see patients, they see families, they have suppliers, they talk to authorities. They really have the space to make things move.”

According to Jochum, lowering emissions, between now and 2030 is “absolutely feasible and achievable.” 

Healthcare is vulnerable to climate extremes 

Sharing the experience of the Philippines, one of the top 10 most climate vulnerable countries, was physician Renzo R Guinto, of St Luke’s Medical Center in Manila and the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health in Malaysia.

“We’ve witnessed firsthand the confluence between two crises, the climate crisis on one hand and the COVID-19 crisis on the other,” he said. “Imagine you are a poor Filipino, confronting the dilemma: do I stay in the house to protect myself from the unseen coronavirus only for the roof of the house to be blown away by the strong wind?”

Guinto also emphasized that climate change does not only affect physical health, but also mental health.

“In a recent survey, it was found out that the Filipino young people are the most climate anxious in the world,” he pointed out. “At least 90% of the young Filipinos surveyed are moderately to extremely worried about their climate and stable future.”

But the Philippines is already leading the way in the fight to make health facilities more climate resilient, he added. The country´s Ministry of Health put in place a framework to adapt the health system to climate change beginning two decades ago. 

Echoing the climate change and health message at COP27

Maria Neira, the director of the World Health Organization’s Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health joined the panel from the COP27 Climate conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, where WHO has hosted a series of events on health and climate themes every day at a WHO pavilion – including sessions on greening health facilities.

Dr Maria Neira speaking at the event.

“We hope that we will be not only able to convince everyone that climate change is already affecting our health in a very negative way, but also to present the policy arguments and the reasons why we need to do much more to tackle the causes of climate change and air pollution, because the health benefits will be enormous,” said Neira.

The panellists agreed that decarbonizing should not come at the expense of ensuring access to healthcare in developing countries, where often facilities lack access to electricity, let alone green energy.

Solar panels provide electricity to Mulalika health clinic in Zambia.

However, they pointed out that there are opportunities to build systems in low-resourced settings and solar energy.

While there are health systems around the world that need to decarbonize “others are wanting of support and resources in order to enhance resilience and to adapt to the impacts of climate change that are already being experienced now,” said Guinto. 

“In fact, these health systems, which have nothing to do with the climate crisis, in terms of emissions are also doing their share by adopting solar or embracing sustainable healthcare waste management practices,” he added.

For this reason, the physician emphasized, it is not possible to adopt a “one size fits all approach.” 

“Instead, we need to be coming up with solutions that are tailored to the different contexts and to the different situations,” he concluded.

The event was co-organized by the Institute of Global Health of the University of Geneva and the Geneva Health Forum. The panel was introduced by Jelena Milenkovic, Director of Operations at the Geneva Health Forum and moderated by Suerie Moon, Co-Director of the Global Health Centre.

Image Credits: Richard Catabay/ Unsplash, Twitter: @GVAGrad_GHC, Twitter: @GVAGrad_GHC, UNDP/Karin Schermbrucker for Slingshot .

preterm baby
Preterm baby in incubator

The World Health Organization (WHO) has strongly recommended that babies born before 37 weeks of gestation (preterm) or with low birth weight should be provided immediate skin to skin contact with a caregiver, which in turn increases their chances of survival. 

This recommendation by the global health agency is a significant change from the previous guideline which stated that preterm babies and babies born with low birth weight should be first stabilised in an incubator before any other interventions. 

The WHO released the new guidelines for care of preterm or low birth weight infants days before World Prematurity Day, 17 November, which is promoting skin to skin contact as the theme of this year.  

The change in the existing guidelines comes in light of strong evidence of survival in babies born before a gestational period of 37 weeks or with a birth weight of under 2.5kgs. The new guidelines consist of 25 recommendations, of which 11 are described by WHO as “strong” recommendations based on robust evidence, and 14 are conditional recommendations, based on emerging evidence. 

“The first embrace with a parent is not only emotionally important, but also absolutely critical for improving chances of survival and health outcomes for small and premature babies,” Dr Karen Edmond, Medical Officer for Newborn Health at WHO said, in a press release. She added that separating babies from their mothers at childbirth is catastrophic to the health of these babies, as seen during Covid-19. “These new guidelines stress the need to provide care for families and preterm babies together as a unit, and ensure parents get the best possible support through what is often a uniquely stressful and anxious time.”

The latest guidelines also include a good practice statement on the need for parental leaves and entitlements for parents and other primary caregivers of preterm or low birth weight babies. 

Immediate Kangaroo-mother-care 

Every year, 15 million babies across the world are born before reaching a gestational age of 37 weeks. This is over 10% of the total births annually. Prematurity is the leading cause of deaths in children under the age of five. 

Skin to skin contact, also known as Kangaroo-mother care (KMC), between the infant and the caregiver immediately after birth has shown to reduce infections, hypothermia and improve feeding. 

In making its recommendations, WHO analysed 27 randomised controlled trials conducted from 1994 to 2021, which involved 11,956 infants, that studied the differences in outcomes between later KMC of preterm and low birth weight infants and infants provided with KMC immediately. These studies were conducted in high-income, upper-middle income, lower-middle income and lower income countries. 

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 2021, which laid the foundation for the new WHO recommendations, found  that based on the available data, initiating skin to skin contact immediately after birth has the potential to save up to 150,000 babies from dying each year. 

KMC was already known to reduce mortality by 40% when started after the infants are clinically stabilised. Starting the process immediately after birth improves the chances of survival by an additional 25%, as per the NEJM study. 

A clinical trial, which was part of the study, was conducted across five countries – India, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Ghana. 

Role of community support crucial

In the new guidelines, the WHO has also emphasised the importance that one’s family, community and local resources can have in improving the survival of preterm or low birth weight babies. 

Apart from education and counselling programmes, the agency pointed out that adequate and appropriate leave for parents and primary caregivers of such babies can go a long way in improving their outcomes. 

“Home visits by trained health workers are recommended to support families to care for their preterm or low-birth-weight infant,” the recommendations continued. 

Sperm count
A new study has mapped a massive decline in sperm count – environment primary suspect.

A worldwide decline in sperm counts of more than 50% over the past 46 years has been identified by a team of international researchers, and the decline has accelerated since the year 2000, according to an article in the journal Human Reproduction Update published on Tuesday.

The article updates a previous study published in 2017, providing strong evidence for the first time of a decline in sperm count and total sperm concentration in men from South and Central America, Asia and Africa.  A previous study showed a similar decline in North America, Europe and Australia. 

Threat to human survival?

“We have a serious problem on our hands that, if not mitigated, could threaten mankind’s survival,” said Professor Hagai Levine of the Hebrew University- Hadassah Braun School of Public Health, who led the study in collaboration with a team of scientists from Denmark, Brazil, Spain and the United States.

Levine described the findings as a “canary in the coal mine – a red flag. There is a loss of biological diversity around the world. We know that reproduction is very sensitive to the environment and it is essential for future existence.”

A mom and her newborn baby in Dhaka, Bangladesh.  Exposures to environmental toxins in the womb could be one of the reasons for reduced sperm count, researchers say.

Data from 53 countries was included in the meta-analysis, including Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom and the United States.

The previous study focused only on countries in North America, Europe and Australia and was based on samples collected between 1973 and 2011. The latest study includes seven additional years of sample collection. 

Levine told Health Policy Watch that the data shows a decline of around 2.5% each year in mean sperm concentration since the year 2000, which is “a clear signal that something is wrong with men’s sperm count around the world, something that cannot be explained by genetics.”

Sperm count
Dr Hagai Levine

Sperm count is the total number of sperm a man produces. Sperm concentration is the number of sperm per millilitre of semen. 

These are not the only predictors of fertility. Another predictor is total motile sperm, which looks at what percentage of sperm are able to swim and move. Infertility is generally defined as a couple’s inability to get pregnant for one year despite regular intercourse. 

Sperm concentration and count are not only good markers of men’s ability to participate in conception, but have also been linked to men’s general health, including premature mortality and morbidity risks.

In other words, men with lower sperm counts have higher chances of becoming sick or dying at a younger age, Levine said.

He noted that the worldwide decline in sperm concentration and count is consistent with other adverse trends in men’s health, including increasing rates of testicular cancer and genital birth defects.

Primary suspect: mother’s exposure to environmental toxins in pregnancy

Heavy metals, toxic gasses, urban air pollution and unhealthy lifestyles may all lower sperm count; portrayed here, air pollution in Cairo, Egypt

While the study does not aim to prove the cause of the decline in sperm count and concentration, Levine said animal research points to a connection between environmental toxins and hormonal disruptions or imbalances, which in turn impede reproductive capacity. 

Growing evidence that plasticisers, pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, toxic gasses, air pollution and poor lifestyle choices such as sedentary behaviour, poor diet and smoking all are tied to abnormal sperm count. 

“The primary suspect is a mother’s exposure to man-made chemicals during pregnancy,” Levine told Health Policy Watch. “We also know exposure in adult life and lifestyle choices such as smoking and poor nutritional habits can be associated with poor sperm count.”

He stressed, however, that the research is neither definitive nor does it establish which chemicals specifically may be causing the decline.

Dr Ryan Smith, associate professor of urology at the University of Virginia, confirmed Levine’s assessment. After reviewing the paper, he said that “the impact of reproductive toxins on male infertility deserves further investigation and there is cause for concern”. 

Environmental toxins a threat to reproductive health

Microplastics collected from the Rhode River, Maryland, whose tributeries feed into the Chesapeake Bay.

“Environmental toxin exposure represents a clear threat to our global reproductive and general health. Increased public awareness and advocacy that leads to more careful monitoring and regulation will be critical to protect our future global health and our environment,” Smith said. 

He added that while the authors acknowledge that sperm count is an imperfect assessment of fertility and point out that a higher sperm count does not necessarily imply a higher probability of conception, “the authors should be commended for this work and their prior investigations into the decline in male reproductive health.”

The 2017 study that focused primarily on developed countries was well received. However, there were some researchers who pushed back at the report, including a team from Harvard’s GenderSci Lab led by Sarah S. Richardson, which called the previous assessment “overblown” and noted that separate research contradicted the assumption that there was a causal link between declining sperm counts and declining fertility and between exposure to certain chemicals and lower sperm counts. 

Health Policy Watch reached out to Richardson and asked her to evaluate the updated study, but Richardson could not respond by press time.

Levine said that in his own country and in the US there are a growing number of theoretically healthy couples who struggle to conceive and require assistance. “This is not something that is supposed to be,” he said. “Our species is supposed to be able to reproduce.”

New study includes meta-analysis of over 10,000 publications

To develop the analysis, Levine and team systematically reviewed all the relevant studies published until 2019 that they could find according to a strict protocol. Then, using sophisticated modelling they adjusted the data from different places and studies to get one estimate about the global trend in sperm count and concentration.

“This requires enough data, and so we screened over 10,000 publications that gave data on sperm count,” Levine explained. “We read the papers, and with a large team of researchers and according to a strict protocol, identified which studies met our criteria and then, from those studies, extracted the relevant data.”

While he said that relying on modelling was not foolproof nor a substitute for additional research of specific populations at specific points in time, Levine noted that modelling is a good way to evaluate long-term trends. 

“We are seeing the forest from the trees,” he said. “We aim to look at the overall picture.”

Urgent call for action to promote healthier environments

Healthier lifestyles and environments reduce exposure to environmental toxins.

“As clinicians, we can educate our patients and advocate for continued research and public health support,” Smith said. 

He said the topic should be given attention not only by clinicians and scientists but also from decision-makers and the general public.

“Men need to be aware that their health and lifestyle choices can impact their reproductive health and that lifestyle changes, such as increased exercise and a healthy diet can have positive impacts,” Smith concluded. 

Added Levine “We urgently call for global action to promote healthier environments for all species and reduce exposures and behaviors that threaten our reproductive health.”

Image Credits: Photo by Nadezhda Moryak, UN Photo/Kibae Park/Flickr, Avi Hayon Hadassa, Kim Eun Yeul / World Bank, Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program, WHO.

Digital Health
Young people rely more on social media to get information on health.

New report highlights the impact of social media on the health of young people in middle- and low-income countries. 

The digital transformation of health offers both significant empowerment potential and significant risks for young people, according to a new study published Tuesday by the Global Health Centre of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.

The report, “Digital health and human rights of young adults in Ghana, Kenya and Vietnam,” highlights young people’s increasing dependence on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok to access health information, and demonstrates the challenges and opportunities that arise in the realm of human right as a result. 

“We hear all this excitement around digital health and we don’t know how much is hype and how much is true,” explained Prof Sara “Meg” Davis, a senior researcher for the Digital Health and Rights Project, who led the study. “There are also concerns for people who are marginalized or vulnerable” on the digital platforms.

Davis told Health Policy Watch that the digital ethnography her team conducted was “revealing” because it confirmed just how much young people were using social media to get their health answers. It also raised concerns that the World Health Organization’s definition of digital health does not even mention social networks.

Digital health generally centers on telemedicine and the use of technology to receive care, or on tailored digital health applications, Davis said. But it leaves out mainstream social media as a source of care. Her study showed that Google searches and social networks are the primary source of health information for many young people. 

Davis and her international team have been working on the report for two years. It will be formally released during a public webinar on November 22 titled “Digital justice: How social media is transforming young people’s health and rights.” The webinar will take place from 14:00-15:30 CEST. Registration is available online.

Transnational participatory action research

The report is based on qualitative research with 174 young people and 33 experts in Ghana, Kenya and Vietnam. It specifically centers on their use of mobile phones to access information on HIV, sexual and reproductive health and COVID-19. Carried out using a transnational participatory action research (PAR) approach, teams in all three countries explored the tensions between the benefits and risks to young people’s rights to health and human rights, identified themes and patterns in the data, and helped identify areas for policy action. 

The research team included academic social scientists, staff at national community-led networks, human rights groups and civil society organizations. 

“The study represents the first transnational participatory action research project in global digital health,” Davis said. “Participatory action research empowers the community to have a voice in the design, data-gathering and analysis of the findings for action. Our study is a unique collaboration between global and national networks of social scientists and affected communities. We are excited to share both the findings and the approach, which we believe is key to creating new forms of evidence and public participation in the digital age.” 

The November 22 event will include a panel discussion, including some of the staff who took part in the study. Participants will be Stephen Agbenyo, Executive Director, Savana Signatures; Terry Gachie, Country Coordinator, Love Matters Kenya; Professor Catalina Gonzalez-Uribe, Universidad de los Andes; Tabitha Ha, Advocacy Manager, STOPAIDS; and Tigest Tamrat, Technical Officer, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, WHO.

Health champions

The study documents a growing group of social media influencers and other health champions who offer health information and advice from medically sound sources in a language and level of acceptability that is comfortable for today’s young people. There are also chat rooms and social media groups that have successfully managed to recruit young people to join them and that have become safe online spaces for discussion on sensitive topics. 

Young people emphasized the importance of these “online families” for access to medicines, financial aid and psychosocial support, especially during COVID-19 lockdowns.

“[Our social media group] is more or less like a family, because we can help someone if that person is in need,” an HIV peer outreach counsellor in Ghana said. “If that person is sick and needs some help – maybe that person is in an abused case – we can step in. …The great benefit that we are getting out of it is the education that we are putting out there, and the services they are receiving.” 

Davis said that young people expressed enthusiasm for accessing health information through online channels because they believed their anonymity was protected online and they could therefore avoid some of the stigmas they might otherwise experience in clinics. 

At the same time, young people in all three countries shared serious harms linked to their use of digital health services, including verbal abuse and threats. This was especially true of young women, LGBTQ+ people and sex workers. 

“One of my friends posted on Facebook that she feels cold, has a headache, wondering what could be the problem? Just asking in the Kisumu Moms group. She was told: ‘You are pregnant, you have sugar daddies,’ and so on. People started throwing words at her until she withdrew that post,” explained a 25-year-old woman from Kenya.

Another thing the researchers found was a group of “really innovative people on social media” with significant followings in the tens of thousands or even millions in all three countries, who are serving as champions of sexual and reproductive health, David said.

“Young people have used their online access to information and social media networks to form extraordinarily powerful communities, investing little more than their own airtime and energy, and have literally saved lives by sharing medicines and information during COVID-19 lockdowns,” it says in the study. “As one young social media health champion suggested in Nairobi, they could do so much more by working together in partnership with health agencies.”

The work of some of these groups and individual influencers will be showcased during the webinar on the 22nd. Among them will be two of the organizations that participated, Love Matters Kenya with its 1.5 million Facebook followers, and Savana Signatures, which is running a hotline in 10 languages on reproductive health in Ghana. 

Misinformation 

Gachie of Love Matters Kenya said that her group has found censorship to be among the biggest challenges. Facebook, she said, often inadvertently censors content on the topic of sex, even when it is educational. The group has had many posts pulled down, marked as “escort services,” for example.

In addition, she said the government has sometimes intervened in the sharing of content, as have more conservative group members, who will report some posts. 

Another challenge is misinformation, said Pham Huyen Trang, program manager of the Vietnam Network of People living with HIV and a researcher on the study.

“There is information online that is not true, and sometimes young people access it before they realise and then they are scared,” Trang said. She noted that sometimes even untested medicines and other treatments can be offered that put people at risk. 

“Not everyone comes to learn,” said Gachie. “Some people come to sell products that are not even approved on the market. There is always a balance between being open and keeping people out who can do harm.”

Gachie added that minimal staffing is also a challenge because of the lack of understanding about how important it is to have experts working with these online groups. 

Finally, the youth need to have a better grasp of their online rights and the ability to protect their data.

“Our review also found that the use of social media, social chat and web searches for health information and peer support is generally not addressed in global health strategies and policies,” the report said. “While all three countries have data protection laws and policies, key informants in each country described implementation and enforcement as weak.

“Young people in the study generally had little knowledge of these laws or their rights,” the study continued. “Many expressed enthusiasm, nonetheless, to learn more about digital technologies and governance, and to play an active role in the digital transformation. They called for more resources and training and a voice in policy.”

The findings also demonstrated the need for governments and WHO to work together to roll out more robust regulations of social media and web platforms in the area of health. 

Trang said the interviews highlighted the need for training and noted that those interviewed said they wanted to learn to be able to take a more active role in their health. 

“Future digital health strategies should engage young people in creative thinking about ways to bridge the intersectional digital divides, empower young people with knowledge and information, and consult them in the design and governance of digital technologies,” according to the study.

A second phase of the study has been launched in Bangladesh and Colombia.

Image Credits: Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash.