2 September 2014
WHO Conference Calls for Strengthening Health Resilience to Climate Change
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The World Health Organization (WHO) Conference on Health and Climate discussed linking climate, sustainable development and health policy.

The conference also produced a draft summary recognizing the need to strengthen health resilience to climate change and highlighting the opportunity for climate change mitigation measures to achieve public health gains.

health-conference29 August 2014: The World Health Organization (WHO) Conference on Health and Climate discussed linking climate, sustainable development and health policy. The conference also produced a draft summary recognizing the need to strengthen health resilience to climate change and highlighting the opportunity for climate change mitigation measures to achieve public health gains.

The conference, which took place from 27-29 August 2014, in Geneva, Switzerland, focused on: the state of climate science, particularly as it relates to health; the public health response to climate change; health resilience; health benefits and health promotion while mitigating climate change; and the economics of health and climate change.

During the conference, participants discussed, among other things, linking climate, sustainable development and health policy. Several reported on the impacts of climate change on health that are already being observed in their countries. Speaking at the conference, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan highlighted that the climate change discussions need to give more attention to the impact of climate change on health and stressed that “the planet is losing its capacity to sustain human life in good health.”

Using the draft summary produced by the conference, the WHO Secretariat will produce a final outcome document, which is expected to deliver conclusions that will be used as input to the 2014 Climate Summit taking place in New York in September. The conclusions are also intended to serve as input to the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the post-2015 development agenda discussions, and the 3rd World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in 2015. [IISD RS Coverage] [Conference Website] [WHO Director-General’s Statement]


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