UN
Climate Change
Global
Climate Action
28
October
2021 | |
High Level Climate Champions
Newsletter | |
The race to a
resilient, zero-emissions economy before 2050 is
a race to a healthier future, with fewer
premature deaths caused by dirty air and water,
natural disasters, food shortages and other
impacts of climate change.
That’s 11,500
health care facilities in 21 countries
committing to do their fair share of halving
greenhouse gas emissions between 2020 and 2030
and reaching net zero emissions before 2050.
Among them: the Kerala Directorate of Health
Services in India, the international health care
and insurance provider Bupa, the US nonprofit
health care system CommonSpirit Health and the
US private system Ascension.
This
leadership is part of a diverse and growing
movement for climate
action in the global health sector, including with
national governments committing to decarbonize
health care and make it resilient to climate
impacts.
This is
important because the climate crisis is above
all a public health crisis, undermining progress
in health care, according to the 2021 Lancet
Countdown on Health and Climate Change report released last
week. It causes more frequent and intense
extreme weather such as heatwaves, floods and
droughts; it increases the spread of infectious
diseases such as dengue, malaria and cholera;
and it exacerbates food and water shortages and
poverty.
In 2020, 72
per cent of countries saw an increase in human
exposure to wildfire and up to 19 per cent of
the global land surface was affected by drought
in any month, it said. Those who contribute the
least to global emissions are feeling the worst
impacts.
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Deaths can be
prevented, and inequality alleviated, if
countries, cities, regions, businesses,
investors and others come up with meaningful
commitments and policy
changes at COP26 to cut emissions this
decade, clean up the air we breathe and
transition to healthier, more sustainable diets.
The World
Health Organization recently recommended 10
priority actions for addressing the climate and
health crises together, including placing health
and social justice at the heart of COP26 talks,
protecting and restoring nature and promoting
healthy, sustainable and resilient food
systems.
The “rapid
economic reactivation” underway after Covid-19
offers an “unprecedented opportunity” to follow
the WHO’s previous prescription for a healthy, green
recovery, the
Lancet added. That WHO manifesto calls for
supporting nature, essential services such as
water and sanitation, the energy transition,
healthy and sustainable food systems and
liveable cities.
The WHO also
strengthened its guidelines for
air quality in
September, saying that almost 80 per cent of
deaths related to PM2.5 pollution - mostly from
the burning of fossil fuels - would be avoided
if all countries followed them. Air pollution
currently causes around 7 million premature
deaths worldwide, according to the
WHO.
Health care
professionals around the world are calling on
leaders to take climate action that protects
human health and equity, with 450 organizations
representing over 45 millions health workers
signing a prescription this month.
The health
care sector can take seven high-impact steps to
reduce emissions by 44 gigatonnes over 36 years
- equivalent to keeping over 2.7 billion barrels
of oil in the ground and potentially saving over
5 million lives by 2100, according to Health
Care Without Harm’s roadmap for the sector. Those
include shifting to full renewable power, invest
in zero-emission buildings and transport, and
incentivizing and producing low-carbon
pharmaceuticals.
The
pharmaceutical and medical technology sector hit
a breakthrough in ambition in September in the
push to halve emissions between 2020 and 2030,
with 31 per cent of major companies by revenue
joining the Race to Zero. New joiners, through
the Business
Ambition for 1.5°C initiative, include
Thermo Fisher (US), Novartis (Switzerland),
Demant (Denmark) and HU Group
(Japan).
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The Marrakech Partnership & High-Level
Champions at
COP26 | |
COP26 is set
to see a groundswell of commitment and action
from across the global economy, from businesses,
investors, cities and regions. And they’ll be
sending their governments a loud and clear
message: we are ready, willing and able to
accelerate and widen the transformation to halve
greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience
within the 2020s. The full programme of the
Marrakech Partnership is available here .
Climate
resilience is firmly on the agenda at COP26 with
the launch of the Resilience Hub. The full
programme is now live with programming across
the full two weeks, the first time climate
resilience has a permanent home at a
COP.
To get ahead
of the pack and find out what news is driving
each and every day, subscribe to the High-Level
Climate Action Champion's Daily COP26 Digest.
Published before 12pm GMT, the Champions' digest
will provide a quick bulletin of the biggest and
most impactful announcements coming each day and
explain why it matters. This Global Climate
Action newsletter will also be emailed out every
two days, wrapping up the daily digest.
The news will
follow the official theme of each day of the
summit - from finance, to energy, to nature, to
youth empowerment - and keep you in the know of
who is committing to what and what it means for
the global race to a healthy, safe, resilient
zero-emissions future.
For more on
what to expect from COP26, from the importance
of making good food available to delegates to
the need for trust, watch UNFCCC Executive
Secretary Patricia Espinosa, European Climate
Foundation CEO Laurence Tubiana and High-Level
Champion Gonzalo Muñoz at TED
Countdown.
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- The UK COP26 Presidency
this week published a Climate
Finance Delivery Plan to show when and how
developed countries will meet the goal to
mobilize US$100 billion per year of public and
private climate finance from
2020.
- The new or updated
Nationally Determined Contributions submitted by
143 parties to the Paris Agreement would reduce
emissions by about 9 per cent in 2030 compared
to 2010 levels, according to UN Climate Change’s
NDC
Synthesis report updated
this week.
However, all 192 NDCs would lead to 16 per cent
increase by 2030, or a temperature rise of 2.7°C
by 2100.
- Governments plan to
produce more than twice the amount of fossil
fuels in 2030 that would be consistent with
limiting warming to 1.5°C, according to the
UN
Environment Programme’s Production Gap
report. G20
countries have directed around US$300 billion
towards fossil fuels since Covid-19 started,
more than towards clean energy.
- The benefits
of regenerative agriculture in Africa, for
society and business, are bigger than expected,
the Africa
Regenerative Agriculture Study Group has found. Sustained
use of regenerative agriculture can increase
yields by 68-300 per cent, while household
incomes for smallholder farmers could rise by up
to US$150 per year.
- Africa saw mounting food
insecurity, poverty and displacement in 2020 as
a result of changing precipitation patterns,
rising temperatures and more extreme weather,
according to the World
Meteorological Organization’s State of Climate
in Africa report. This is compounding
the socio-economic and health crisis triggered
by Covid-19 on the continent.
- The built
environment sector hit a breakthrough in
ambition this
week, with US$1.2 trillion of real estate assets
under management now part of the Race to Zero.
Over 100 SME construction companies in 10
countries, and 20 per cent of architects and
engineers, have joined the campaign. The
percentage of construction companies who are
members has also doubled in the last two
months.
- Chile became the first
emerging market to end the
sale of petrol and diesel vehicles, requiring that all
light and medium vehicles, public transport and
heavy trucks sold from 2035 be zero-emission.
New smaller trucks used in construction,
agriculture and forestry will have to be
zero-emissions by 2040, followed by all cargoes
and inter-urban buses in 2045.
- The Under2
Coalition of
states and regions will now require members to
aim for net zero emissions, as it transitions to
become a net-zero coalition by 2050.
- London
Mayor Sadiq Khan is the new chair of
C40, the coalition of 97 cities representing
over 700 million people and a quarter of the
global GDP.
- Russia faces a slow but steady
depletion of capacity to absorb emissions
through forests by 2040, as a result of record
forest fires, ageing trees and felling - but the
country is emerging as a leader in forest
management certification, according to research
by Climate Chance.
- About 12 million people
were employed in the global renewable energy
sector in 2020, up from 7.3 million in 2012,
according to the International Renewable Energy
Agency. Solar
PV leads the way with 4 million
jobs.
- Young
Africans
deserve to be a part of the discussion over
climate plans and projects that will govern
their future, the African Youth Initiative on
Climate Change says. It calls among other
things, for climate finance for youth employment
to be scaled up, for resources to build
community resilience and unlock green jobs, and
for the integration of African youth in climate
negotiations.
- The High-Level Climate
Champions and Marrakech Partnership have
published guiding
principles for climate-aligned hydrogen
development,
to help firms, governments and communities
manage complex issues such as emissions
accounting, health and socioeconomic equity and
to streamline the production of low- and
zero-carbon hydrogen.
Keep
up to date with news from around the Race to
Zero and Race to Resilience community, by
checking out racetozero.unfccc.int
for new stories every day!
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