‘Health is the face of climate change’: how can cities mitigate the impact of global warming

with us. We uh focus on COP 30, the 30th session of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It’s just around the corner. All eyes are on the host country, Brazil, a country, of course, rich in natural resources. At the heart of the global climate conversation, there are warnings that the Paris Accord to keep the planet cooler can now not be met. That of course was limiting warming to 1.5° C above pre-industrial times. For that you can read from 1850 onwards which of course could have a knock- on effect for the polar ice caps, Arctic Antarctic shelves, but also for the health of the world. A hotter planet means that insects for instance carrying infectious diseases can thrive in places where in the past it may well have been too cold to allow them to survive. I’m thinking of in Iceland recently mosquitoes discovered there for the very first time. Gabriel Nettle has this look at how the climate change issue is affecting our health. Around the world, people are experiencing the impact of climate change in real time as extreme heat waves and air pollution affect human health. According to the 2025 Lancet countdown report on health and climate change, published last Wednesday, it’s worse than ever before. Climate change risks on health and the threats to our health and well-being are growing and are reaching new record high levels across most of the indicators in which we’re monitoring them. And we’re also seeing a world that is kind of backtracking on the necessary climate actions and on previous commitments that would have protected people’s health and people’s wellbeing. The report released about a week before COP 30 in Brazil found that since the 1990s, heat related deaths have increased 23% to 546,000 annually. Wildfire smoke was also linked to a record 154,000 deaths in 2024. And burning fossil fuels was found to cause 2.5 million deaths a year. Experts are urging leaders to use COP 30 to take meaningful action to address the worsening health consequences. So we need well articulated global efforts to ensure that firstly we are um adapting to climate change and we’re supporting all countries in strengthening our health systems to give a good response and reduce the threat of infectious disease transmission and other adverse health impacts of climate change through good health system adaptation. That needs funding. that needs knowledge and that needs cooperation. This message has been echoed by billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates who wrote a blog post last Tuesday arguing COP 30 should center human welfare and focus on bettering health and agriculture in vulnerable nations. Gabriel with that report I’m now joined for more on this from Berm in Brazil where COP third will be taking place by Amelia Carrera. Amelia is a leading voice in health and green advocacy. uh she is the director of the health initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation. Emilia Carv, thank you for being with us in France 24. We appreciate you joining us. What are you expecting from what is obviously a pivotal summit in Brazil as the fight for a cleaner, healthier planet is more urgent than ever. First of all, thank you Mark for having me today. Um I’m calling from Rio de Janeiro actually at the preop conference uh held here in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Uh it’s it’s a forum of local leaders of city mayors getting together uh on the road to COP and this COP is is quite important for health. uh we’re expecting negotiators to come to agreement on indicators on climate and health uh on on targets and indicators related to for example heat related mortality or universal health coverage. So this is a moment to go from pledges to action and act and in here this this past couple of days in in the pre-op conference of mayor summit held by uh C40 and other partners. Uh it’s been a moment to hear from mayors what’s happening locally and what actions they are taking locally. I know Paris is part of this uh cool cities accelerator initiative that you’re involved with. Uh, and thinking back to what happened last summer, um, June 2025, 235 excess deaths, uh, in France due to the heat. If we think back to 2003 when there was a big, uh, heat wave and, and a massive problem with people dying in Paris, nearly 2,000 people or more uh, died because of the heat issues there. There was an inability to cope with the excess heat. And of course, the planet is getting hotter. This hot weather is becoming more and more recurrent. How will your initiative, this cooler cities accelerator, help? What are you hoping to achieve with it? The cool cities accelerator is a coalition of 33 cities, 33 mayors committing to health related heat and health related targets uh and other heat targets for their cities. And it’s a it’s a a pledge that mayors are signing on to and committing action also to protect their residents from heat. So in the short term they are going to be implementing things like early warning systems for heat or understanding better how to do heat related work and in the governance issues uh solving the governance issues around heat. In the longer term, these mayors are committing to rethinking and redesigning their cities so that uh the city itself is not as hot and and people can live and have better lives in these places. So, it’s a question of constructing better and enabling the people to use what they have around them in a better way in order to keep cooler. Emilia, can I park that there and maybe take you to a different kind of of battle against the heat that which people in Africa face for instance? um on my rare visits to Africa and every time I’ve been there, been wonderfully welcomed and met some really interesting people. But one of the the things that everybody’s complained about is the fact that where they are it gets too hot and dealing with that is an increasing challenge. Correct. It’s an increasing challenge and not only not only for in terms of health, I think there’s another angle that sometimes we have to remember and it’s the uh productivity. many people need to stop working because it’s too hot. Um, actually the Lancet countdown report that that was mentioned earlier estimated the number of hours that were lost last year because it was too hot to work. In terms of people’s health, I’m thinking now of including perhaps a criticism of what happened in the US with Donald Trump cutting US aid to certain countries. Are are you seeing there’s been an impact on that combined with the heat which is creating a more unhealthy situation for people particularly across Africa. I I cannot comment specifically on on those cuts, but what I can tell you is that what we’ve seen so far is the commitment from local leaders uh whether it’s at the state level or city level to respond to the to climate risks including heat. Um and the cool cities accelerator, it’s only the first signal of 33 cities across the world committing to uh responding to these conditions. U but it’s not only that. I think we’ve seen uh many examples and and many more leaders committing to other uh climate risks that are directly affecting their cities. Many times cities are are on the front lines and they need they’re seeing these needs closer and they are responding uh more effectively. Hear what you say. I know you look at Africa. I know you look at that in America too and and across the Caribbean where we’ve been reporting on the effects of the climate there with with Jamaica being hit uh with uh the destruction that we’ve seen there obviously the issue of heat uh and and the effect on people’s health right across the whole continent of the Americas. It is really is something that of vital importance to to to combat. What are the factors you’re hoping to set in place briefly in this COP 30? Can you give us a sense of what you’d like to leave COP 30 with? I think it’s going to be really important to come to an agreement on those indicators. Um what are those indicators that we want to agree as a whole world uh and we’re committing to achieving. Um I think also keeping health at the forefront when we talk about climate health is the face of climate change. Uh it makes it people feel it, people see it. And so if we are able at this COP to make that elevate that message that health is the face of climate change and is the most tangible way to explain what is the impact of extreme weather events on people’s lives and livelihoods, I think we we we would have advanced on our agenda. Amelia Carrera, thank you for taking time out of this precop in Rio uh where you’re trying to try to get a head start on the issues which are of vital importance as you’ve been pointing out to us. Amelia Carrera, director of the health initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your hopes and aspirations for this COP 30 which is of course incredibly important and as Amelia was saying, the issue of health, heat and the effect of climate change on people is something that is more and more apparent to everybody. Amelia, thanks again for joining us in France 24. We appreciate your time. Thank you.

A Lancet report released last week found that since the 1990s, heat-related deaths have increased 23% to 546,000 annually as global temperatures rise. We speak with Emilia Carrera, Director of the Health Initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation, about how urban areas can mitigate the impact of global warming in cities and protect residents in urban areas.
#Environment #COP30 #GlobalWarming

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