15 May 2009: The UNFCCC Secretariat has posted the submission by the World Health Organization (WHO) on ideas and proposals on the elements of paragraph 1 of the Bali Action Plan that will be examined by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) at its sixth session in Bonn, Germany, from 1-12 June 2009.

The paper is entitled “Protecting the health of vulnerable people from the humanitarian consequences of climate change and climate related disasters.”
The paper was developed within the framework of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), a task force on climate change of the WHO, in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), World Vision (WV), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and in consultation with the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR) system.
The paper is based on the recognition that climate change mitigation and adaptation are important for protecting the health of vulnerable populations from both sudden and slow onset climate-related emergencies. The paper aims to document the range of risks that climate change poses to human health associated with humanitarian emergencies, and propose policy directions to manage the health humanitarian impact of climate change for consideration by the 15th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC, the health sector and by the humanitarian community. [The Paper]