From Climate Negotiations to Resilient Health Systems

Veranstaltungsart
World Health Summit Side Meeting

Ort / Datum
Berlin, 14.10.2025

Veranstalter

Save the Children Germany, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), SLYCAN Trust

This high-level event aims to explore the critical role of international climate policies in building climate-resilient health systems on national and local level. Taking place at a strategically important time, immediately before the COP30 negotiations, the event will examine how new policies can strengthen and protect the most vulnerable.

Policy Context

In 2024, experts were mandated under the United Nation Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) to operationalize the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), including the climate-health nexus and climate-sensitive disease burdens. The experts were tasked with developing a concise set of global indicators to track adaptation progress, to be negotiated at COP30 in Brazil.

To adapt effectively to climate-induced health risks and hazards, countries need robust evidence that informs global policy and action and serve as a basis for identifying needs for financial support, capacity building, technology transfers -- the so-called Means of Implementation. While developed countries agreed at COP26 to double their collective provision of adaptation finance by 2025, recent cuts to multilateral and bilateral funding raise concerns. Moreover, the new climate finance goal (NCQG) agreed at COP29 lacks a dedicated subgoal for adaptation finance. Still, political momentum is growing: the COP28 Climate and Health Declaration mobilized over USD 1 billion, global health and climate funds are aligning their efforts, MDBs adopted a joint framework with health as a core principle, and the World Bank launched a new Climate and Health Program. Frameworks like the WHO and COP30 Presidency’s Belém Health Action Plans support vulnerable countries in building climate-resilient, low-carbon health systems.

This high-level side meeting examines evolving global frameworks and how they support the development of climate resilient healthcare systems, and allow for more effective monitoring, planning, and service delivery without overburdening national health systems.

Guiding Questions

  • How can the development of global climate and health nexus infrastructure such as the one under the UNFCCC, Global Goal on Adaptation translate into real health benefits and resilience at national and local levels, without creating additional burdens for already fragile health systems?
  • How can health policy makers place climate more effectively at the center of health action — and what priorities must shift over the next five years to make this a reality?
  • What steps are needed to ensure that climate finance actually reaches health systems on the ground — and how can global actors like the GCF, regional actors like MDBs, and national development ministries drive this shift?
  • How do we move beyond rhetoric to ensure that vulnerable groups — children, women, and marginalized communities — are at the core of climate–health investments and decision-making?

Participants

The event aims to bring together a diverse group of participants, with a primary focus on national health policymakers who will face expanding climate-related mandates in 2025–2030, including ministers and senior officials, planning/policy directors, public health institute leads, NAP/H-NAP focal points, and health financing directors. It will also include counterparts from climate and environment ministries, development partners, NGOs and civil society and academia. By engaging stakeholders from across sectors, the event seeks to foster collaboration between experts in health and climate adaptation helping to prepare health systems for rising climate risks and forthcoming policy and reporting requirements.

Agenda

Opening 

Welcome address and Setting the Scene

  • Florian Westphal (CEO, Save the Children Germany)  

Input

Climate & Health: Where Are We on Global Climate Adaptation Policy — and What Comes Next?

  • Marek Szilvasi (SLYCAN Trust)

Panel

  • Niels Annen (State Secretary, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development)
  • Karl Lauterbach (Member of the WHO Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health)
  • Sarah Kosgei (AMREF Africa)
  • Ethel Maciel (COP30 Special Envoy for Health + Professor at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil) (tbc)

Moderator

Wrap-up and Closing

Hinweis

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