Third Global Conference on Health and Climate Change

St. George's, Grenada. The SIDS Initiative has a vision that by 2030, all health systems in SIDS will be resilient to climate variability and change. PAHO, jointly with WHO, will convene the Caribbean meeting of the geographically dispersed III Global Conference on Health and Climate Change: Special Focus on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in St. George's, Grenada, from 16-17 October 2018.

The conference will be attended by Ministers of Health, Ministers of Environment, partner agencies, and stakeholders from Caribbean SIDS, who will discuss and identify actions and indicators for an Action Plan on Health and Climate Change to be implemented in the Caribbean.

Similar meetings were held in Fiji, for the Western Pacific Region, and in Mauritius for the African and South-East Asian Regions, in March 2018.

The outputs of the three conferences will be the base for a Global Action Plan to be presented to the World Health Assembly in 2019.

The Conference is part of the WHO Initiative on Climate Change and Health in Small Island Developing States (SIDS). This initiative was launched by WHO, in collaboration with the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the Fijian Presidency of COP-23, at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties, in November 2017.

The SIDS Initiative has a vision that by 2030, all health systems in SIDS will be resilient to climate variability and change; but this must happen in parallel while countries around the world are reducing carbon emissions both to protect the most vulnerable from climate risks, and to gain the health co-benefits of mitigation policies.

Objectives

Empowerment - supporting health leadership in island countries to integrate health into national climate change planning and engage in international climate change negotiations;

Evidence - producing country profiles of climate change and health, describing vulnerabilities and adaptation options (e.g. morbidity and mortality attributed to unsafe water, unsafe sanitation and lack of hygiene, malnutrition, disasters);

Implementation - building climate-resilient health systems, including the strengthening of governance and policy, integration of climate early warning systems with health information systems, preventive and curative service delivery, and disaster-proof and smart health-care facilities; and

Resources - facilitating access to climate and health financing mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility to support climate resilient health systems of island countries.