Participants at a Climate and Health Capacity Building Workshop. Credit: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
BONN, Jun 12 2026 (IPS)

Africa contributes the least to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it faces some of the world’s most severe climate-related health impacts. Several realities define the continent’s climate and health landscape – increased infectious diseases, air pollution, death, disruption and pressure on health systems through heatwaves, floods, droughts and storms.

Changing temperatures and, more significantly, rainfall patterns are expanding the geographical range and transmission dynamics of climate-sensitive diseases such as Malaria, Dengue fever, Cholera and other vector- and water-borne diseases.

Climate-induced droughts, floods, and changing rainfall patterns are reducing agricultural productivity and threatening food systems. This increases hunger, undernutrition, stunting among children, and vulnerability to disease. According to archive.uneca.org, malnutrition remains one of the largest climate-sensitive health risks across Africa.

Thus, as African climate negotiators intensify preparations for the 64^th sessions of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies (SB64), a clear message is emerging from Bonn: climate action without health action is no longer an option.

Over two critical days of engagement, African negotiators, health experts, technical institutions, and young climate leaders came together to strengthen Africa’s negotiating positions and place health firmly at the centre of the continent’s climate agenda.

The Climate and Health Capacity Building Workshop supported by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), and the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) Lead Coordinators Meeting collectively noted the growing recognition that climate change is not only an environmental challenge but also one of Africa’s most pressing public health threats.

For AGN Chair, Nana Dr Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, the connection is clear, and the required measures are equally urgent.

“Health is the human face of the climate crisis,” he told negotiators and partners during the opening of the capacity building workshop in Bonn. “If climate negotiations are ultimately about protecting people, then health must remain at the centre of our efforts.”

Chair of AGN, Nana Dr Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, with Dr Lynn Wagner of IISD at the Climate and Health Capacity Building Workshop. Credit: Friday Phiri

Building a Stronger African Climate and Health Voice

Building on the launch of the first-ever African Negotiators Climate and Health Curriculum in 2025, by Amref Health Africa, the climate and health capacity-building workshop brought together representatives from WHO-AFRO, Africa CDC, Amref Health Africa, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), technical experts, and young negotiators to deepen understanding of climate-health linkages and identify strategic entry points across negotiation tracks.

Participants examined ways to strengthen Africa’s position on adaptation indicators, climate-resilient health systems, early warning systems, health infrastructure, preparedness for climate-related emergencies, and financing mechanisms that can support health adaptation efforts.

“Following the adoption of the Belém Adaptation indicators and the ongoing discussions under the Baku Adaptation Roadmap, Africa has a unique opportunity to shape how adaptation is measured, financed and implemented globally,” said the AGN Chair. “We must ensure that health indicators under the global goal on adaptation are meaningful, context-specific, and responsive to Africa’s realities. We must also continue pushing for adaptation finance that enables African countries to build climate-resilient health systems, strengthen early warning systems, protect health infrastructure, and enhance preparedness for climate-related health emergencies.”

The emphasis on institutional coordination reflected a growing understanding that advancing Africa’s climate and health agenda will require sustained collaboration between negotiators, public health institutions, technical partners, and civil society.

And the WHO-Africa Regional Team Lead on Climate Change, Health and Environment pledged coordinated stakeholder support for the climate and health agenda.

“At the WHO-Regional office, we have developed Africa-specific policy and implementation frameworks in support of an Africa-wide coordinated climate and health agenda. Together with the Africa CDC and Amref Health Africa, we have offered and continue to provide technical support for the continent’s climate and health agenda. As we head to the African COP next year, we pledge continued support to the AGN, as Africa’s voice in climate negotiations, to ensure that climate and health are not left behind.”

Meanwhile, IISD Senior Director for Tracking Progress Programme, Lynn Wagner, noted the need for coordinated climate action, pointing out that “isolated action is no longer tenable as the global community faces multiple and interconnected environmental and sustainable development crises.”

IISD has been supporting the Friends of Climate and Health initiative aimed at fostering international collaboration on climate change and health.

Unity and Coordination Ahead of Critical Negotiations

While health featured prominently in discussions, the AGN Lead Coordinators’ Meeting reinforced a broader strategic priority; maintaining a unified African voice theme across all negotiating streams.

Convening lead coordinators for the various thematic streams, the meeting focused on aligning positions ahead of what is expected to be a pivotal negotiating session, ahead of COP31 in November and, ultimately, COP32 next year.

Drawing on priorities established during the AGN Strategy Meeting in Accra earlier in March this year, lead coordinators reviewed progress in implementing elements of the African Common Platform and assessed emerging issues across the negotiation tracks.

The AGN Chair called for discipline, commitment, and coordinated action.

“Our strength lies in our unity and our ability to speak with one voice,” he said, reminding negotiators that Africa’s influence in the negotiations depends on collective preparation and strategic coordination.

The discussions intensified the interconnected nature of many agenda items. Climate finance remains Africa’s foremost priority, but increasingly, negotiators are recognising how finance decisions affect the various thematic outcomes, particularly, adaptation, which has been Africa’s main agenda over the years.

Health, Finance and the Road to COP32

A recurring theme across both meetings was the need to translate recognition of climate-related health risks into tangible climate finance support for African countries.

Negotiators emphasised the importance of securing adaptation finance that enables countries to build climate-resilient health systems, strengthen disease surveillance and early warning systems, protect health infrastructure, and improve preparedness for climate-related emergencies, as espoused in the Belem Climate and Health Action Plan launched at COP30.

“Health is already recognised within the investment frameworks and result areas of major climate finance mechanisms, such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD),” said David Kaluba, a Climate Finance Lead Negotiator. “However, the challenge is not only the availability of financing windows, but the limited pipeline of country-driven health-focused proposals and investment demand. Most countries have yet to fully integrate health priorities into their national climate plans (NDCs), financing strategies, and project pipelines, resulting in significant underutilisation of available climate finance opportunities for health system resilience, adaptation, and loss and damage responses.”

Kaluba therefore notes the need to generate sufficient country-level demand through evidence generation, development of bankable climate and health investment pipelines, and strengthening of institutional capacity to access and absorb available financing.

A Defining Opportunity for Africa

For many participants, this work extends beyond SB64. It forms part of a broader trajectory towards COP31 and ultimately COP32, significantly viewed as more than a diplomatic milestone.

It represents an opportunity for the continent to shape the global climate agenda around African realities and priorities, including climate and health.

As negotiations intensify, African countries are seeking to ensure that climate action delivers meaningful benefits for people on the ground, and health offers a powerful lens through which to frame that ambition.

Therefore, as formal negotiations begin on 8^th June, one message is clear: protecting the climate ultimately means protecting human health. And for Africa, this principle is becoming an increasingly powerful driver of its engagement in the global climate process.

The author is the Climate Change and Health Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa.

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In response to rising demand for electricity, pressure to keep prices affordable and a need to maintain energy security, the Turkish government plans to increase electricity generation from coal.

According to a report on ‘Subsidies to Coal and Renewable Energy in Turkey’ released on Mar. 24,

Turkey already spent more than 730 million dollars in subsidies to the coal industry in 2013.

This figure, says the report, does not even count subsidies under the Turkish government’s ‘New Investment Incentive Scheme’, which provides tax breaks and low-cost loans to coal projects, so the true figure is likely to be even higher.

The report, by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), says that the Turkish government is planning to triple generation from coal by 2030 despite the fact that renewable energy is already cheaper than coal when external costs, such as health and environmental damage caused by burning coal, are taken into account.

According to the report, the country has developed a strategy “focusing on developing domestic coal resources, such that growth in coal-fired power generation is expected to be highest of all Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.”

Nevertheless, this strategy “also acknowledges the importance of environmental protection and emissions reduction, and foresees a much larger role for renewable energy in the energy future.”

The report comes at a time when public and private institutions are under mounting pressure to stop investing in coal mining companies.

“Subsidies for coal lock in coal power for another generation when renewable sources of energy are less costly for society in economic, social and environmental terms,” said Sevil Acar, Assistant Professor at Istanbul Kemerburgaz University and one of the report’s authors.

The report says that when the costs of coal are compared with the costs of wind and solar energy, taking into account environmental and health costs, electricity from wind power is half the cost of electricity from coal, and solar power is also marginally cheaper than coal.

“This study provides further evidence to support the case for eliminating fossil-fuel subsidies once and for all,” said Peter Wooders, director of IISD’s Energy Programme. “As a G20 country that has already committed to phasing out inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies, this is a call to action for Turkey.”

According to the report, just over half of Turkey’s subsidies are used to provide coal to low-income households and while these serve the important goal of improving energy access, they come at a high health cost and are no replacement for social security programmes.

The report recommends a gradual phase-out of these subsidies in favour of more efficient measures to support access to energy and support social welfare.

Meanwhile, notes the report, coal also remains a significant employer in many areas, and any moves away from coal use would need detailed planning to ensure that affected communities can benefit from compensation measures and additional job creation from new technologies.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The land by Boegbor, a town in district four in Grand Bassa County, Liberia has been leased by the government to Equatorial Palm Oil for 50 years. Credit: Wade C.L. Williams/IPS

By Carin Smaller
GENEVA, Dec 5 2014 (IPS)

When the Korean company Daewoo attempted to acquire half the arable land of Madagascar for free, it unleashed a tsunami of investor interest in agricultural land, popularised as the ‘land grab’.

In the last 10 years there have been more than 1,000 large-scale foreign investments in agricultural land, covering almost 38 million hectares of landequivalent to eight times the size of Britain. Investor interest in farmland was triggered, in 2008, by a confluence of the biofuels boom, global food crisis, a sharp spike in oil prices and the financial crisis.There are over 800 million people in the world who do not have enough food to eat. Seventy five per cent of those people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Many of these farmland investments have created untold problems, particularly related to land rights, social unrest, and in some cases political instability. Many projects have failed or investors have simply given up, either for lack of finance, inexperience, difficult environmental conditions, or unrealistic assumptions about the crops and locations they chose.

And yet many developing countries desperately need investment in agriculture. There are over 800 million people in the world who do not have enough food to eat. Seventy five per cent of those people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Without increased investment in agriculture they will not be able to improve food security nor reduce poverty.

Improving the legal and policy environment in developing countries would do much to improve the situation. The most important step to ensuring positive impacts of foreign investment is the ongoing development of domestic laws and regulations. However, many states do not have all the necessary domestic laws in place and end up negotiating contracts.

Given this reality, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) has recently created a practical guide to help governments in developing countries negotiate contracts with investors to reduce the harmful effects and maximise the benefits of farmland investments.

It is the first attempt to create a model contract for developing countries to attract investment for agricultural production, while at the same time promoting the needs of the poor and protecting the environment. It is based on a three-year investigation of 80 farmland contracts and is unique in that it was drafted by a team of lawyers, social scientists and environmentalists.

This model contract does not create a blueprint. Each contract will necessarily be different, depending on the size of the project, the domestic legal systems, and the country’s needs and realities. Deciding what to include in each contract is the job of the parties both before and during the negotiations.

Nonetheless, we believe there are three factors that are critical for success.

First is the process of preparing for negotiations. This involves identifying suitable and available land (both from an environmental and a land rights perspective). It requires meaningful consultations with and consent by communities living on and around the proposed project site. It is important for investors to assess the feasibility of the project to ensure it is commercially viable.

This assessment should be presented to the governments with a business plan. In this preparatory phase, investors also need to examine the potential social and environmental impacts and prepare a plan for how to manage and mitigate those impacts.

Second is turning investor promises into binding commitments. A major complaint from governments and communities is that investors make big promises to create jobs, to build factories, and to bring new technology; and that these promises rarely materialise.

Promises can be incorporated into the contract to make them legally binding. But they must remain realistic and achievable to avoid setting up the project for failure from the outset.

The third step is turning the contract into reality after it has been signed. A contract is not an endpoint: it is only the start of a long-term relationship between the investor, government and communities.

Implementing and enforcing the contract is a much tougher challenge. It requires regular reporting by the investors on how they are implementing their promises and managing the social and environmental impacts. It requires monitoring and evaluation by governments.

And finally, all steps taken around a potential investment should be open and transparent to minimise the risk of corruption and ensure greater acceptance.

Improving the legal and policy frameworks for investment will help governments maximise the benefits and minimise the risks associated with investment in farmland and water. They will support efforts to strengthen food security and achieve sustainable rural development.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

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