Honourable Enele Sopoaga, Prime Minister of Tuvalu,
Honourable Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama, Prime Minister of Fiji,
Excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues and friends,
Tālofa and bula vinaka!
Good morning, it’s a great privilege to be here at the Climate Change Sautalaga.
I extend my deep gratitude to the Honourable Prime Minister and the people of Tuvalu for hosting this meeting and their great hospitality.
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We depend on our planet for everything we are, and everything we have: the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink.
Climate change therefore strikes at the heart of what it means to be human.
It increases the risks of extreme weather events, such as the cyclones to which your islands are especially susceptible.
I saw this for myself many times as a regular visitor to the Pacific and just last week I also had the opportunity to visit the Afau community in Tonga, where they are planting mangroves to try and fight back against encroaching seas and erosion.
I planted a mangrove in an area which used to be a rugby field, where Tonga and Fiji played some decades ago in the same field. Now it is fully consumed by salt water and many residents in the area have lost their livelihoods. Another is Tuvalu, where
it has started reclaiming land, on which we are right now standing.
This experience brought home to me that climate change is not a political argument for your nations.
Within our century, the nation of Kiribati will be under water.
You are facing the same threat right here in Tuvalu.
As the Honourable Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga has said, "Any further temperature increase will spell the total demise of Tuvalu."
This is not a theoretical danger. It’s an everyday reality. You are literally fighting to keep your heads above water. The photo of the Secretary-General we have just seen symbolizes that.
And as we’ve heard from Mr Hare, climate change is no fantasy invented by scare-mongering conspiracy theorists. It’s a scientific fact.
Although you are the least responsible for climate change, you are among the most at risk.
If pollution and carbon emissions could be kept within the borders of those who emit them, your nations would have nothing to worry about.
But we have one planet, and one climate.
And despite years of talk, the international response remains weak. Many unfulfilled promises have been made about the 1.5° degree level.
As you will hear today, climate change has implications for security, energy, transport, and our oceans.
It’s a threat that requires courageous political leadership, innovative technologies and relentless advocacy. But it all starts with courageous political leadership, which we see here. I also want to thank you, the Prime Minister of Fiji,
for your strong leadership on climate change.
And because the effects of climate change will be felt most acutely by our children and our children’s children, we must listen to the voices of our young people. I’m delighted that they are represented at this meeting.
Many of the children may not have the opportunity to grow up on their own land. They face the threat of becoming a new kind of refugee – climate refugees. The Prime Minister of Fiji calls them climate change refugees and his office has offered assistance
to help them. And I agree with him. Because the Pacific is their home. However, we hope that will not happen.
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I believe strongly that to elicit the action and the resources we need, we must reframe climate change as a health issue.
The effects of climate change on the atmosphere, polar ice caps and sea levels are serious and significant, but for many people they aren’t close enough to home.
However, the effects of climate change on human health are much more immediate and personal.
Apart from the damage to life and livelihoods from extreme weather events, they can also have long-lasting consequences for mental health.
Rising sea levels cause considerable stress and anxiety for people who are watching their homes disappear.
This is an area in which Pacific Island countries can learn from each other. Last week at Vaiola Hospital in Tonga, I saw how the Ministry of Health is running community-based talanoa or kava ceremonies to enhance solidarity among mental health patients
and their sense of belonging.
Climate change also fans the flames of infectious disease such as malaria, zika, cholera and the dengue outbreaks we are now seeing here in Tuvalu and elsewhere in the Pacific.
And it fuels the spread of noncommunicable disease by polluting the air, food and water that sustain life.
Small Island Developing States feel these effects most acutely.
That’s why one of the first things I did as Director-General was to establish a special initiative on climate change and health in small island developing states.
We launched the initiative during COP23 in Germany in 2017, together with UNFCCC and the Honourable Frank Bainimarama, the Prime Minister of Fiji.
The initiative has four main goals:
First, to amplify the voices of health and political leaders in small island developing states to engage nationally and internationally.
Second, to gather the evidence to build the business case for investment in climate change and health;
Third, to prepare for climate risks through preparedness and prevention policies and to build "climate proof" health systems;
And fourth, to facilitate access to climate and health finance. I am glad that the Director of the Green Climate Fund is here with us today.
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We held three consultations – one in Mauritius for the Indian Ocean states, one in Grenada for the Caribbean, and one in Fiji for the Pacific.
From those consultations, we developed an action plan, which was endorsed during the World Health Assembly in May this year. This is very much aligned with the Pacific Action Plan.
At the Pacific Health Ministers Meeting in French Polynesia last week, your nations adopted an implementation roadmap that identifies concrete actions for you and for WHO in the four strategic lines of action. I was very honoured to join the Pacific Health Ministers Meeting. During the meeting I was told by the ministers that this is the first time that a WHO Director General has joined the Pacific Health Ministers’ Meeting. I am glad to be number one.
We are committed to those actions, and to working with you to implement the action plan as a matter of urgency. There is no time to lose.
Our vision is that by 2030, every island in the Pacific will have a health system that is resilient to climate change. This is ambitious, but doable. We also know that recently on one of the Tuvalu outer islands, a health clinic was totally wiped out by tropical cyclone Pam.
Tonga is currently moving one of its hospitals to higher ground. This is one way Pacific Island countries can ensure their health systems are climate-resilient.
But it is not good enough simply to ask your communities to adapt.
We must also work to mitigate the root causes of climate change.
So by 2030, we also see a world in which all countries will be reducing their carbon emissions.
This will protect the most vulnerable from climate risks, and deliver large health benefits in carbon-emitting countries.
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Part of what it means to make your health systems climate-resilient is transforming health services in small island developing states away from expensive models of care that focus on treating the sick, to those that prevent disease and promote health.
As the Declaration of Astana affirms, primary health care is the bedrock of universal health coverage.
There is perhaps nowhere on earth where primary health care is more important than here in the Pacific, where your populations are dispersed over many islands in a wide geographic area.
Large referral hospitals are always important, but we cannot expect people to travel miles by boat for services that could and should be provided locally. This is where we can help you.
The most effective and efficient investments are those that keep people out of hospitals.
Realizing the vision of primary health care will entail important changes inside and outside the health sector.
Within the health system, we must focus on strengthening and reorienting the health workforce to make sure we have the right staff with the right skills in the right places.
Outside the health system, it’s vital that governments adopt a comprehensive, multisectoral approach that addresses the root causes of ill health, in the air people breathe, the food they eat, the roads they drive on and the conditions in which
they live.
These changes have the power not only to improve the health of populations, but to change the trajectory of nations.
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My brothers and sisters,
I leave you with two requests.
First, the United Nations Climate Action Summit during the UN General Assembly next month will highlight the enormous benefits that addressing climate change could bring, not only for the environment, but for economic growth, jobs and human health.
World leaders will be asked to make concrete commitments with tangible impacts on climate mitigation and adaptation.
WHO has been given the mandate to develop two health commitments.
First, commit to save lives, cut carbon emissions, and clean our air.
Second, commit to invest in climate action, public health and sustainable development.
Each of these commitments comes with concrete actions for governments, development banks and funds, bilateral agencies, NGOs and the private sector.
We urge you to adopt these commitments yourselves, but also to promote them. We need as many national and subnational governments, mayors, donors and partners as possible to sign up in advance of the September summit.
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And my second request is that you continue to invest in primary health care.
Promoting health and preventing disease at the community level is the best way not only to adapt to the effects of climate change; it’s also the best investment in the long-term health and prosperity of your populations.
Primary health care helps to keep people out of hospitals, in their homes, their communities and their workplaces. It’s not just an investment in health; it’s an investment in sustainable development.
I invite you to speak at the universal health coverage high level meeting in New York in September. I would really appreciate that. This meeting goes hand in hand with the other major meeting at this time – the Climate Change Summit. I encourage
you strongly to speak at the summit to make sure that the world has a consensus on universal health coverage, especially primary health care, health promotion and disease prevention.
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Thank you once again for the privilege of joining you this morning, for the hospitality you have shown me, and for the leadership you have demonstrated in combating this existential threat.
WHO is committed to supporting you to implement the Pacific Action Plan on Climate Change and Health, and to building a healthier, safer, fairer Pacific for all your people.
We have no time to lose. Every island, every community and every person matters.
In the words of the Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga, I quote, “If we save Tuvalu, we save the world.”
Fakafetai.
Thank you very much.