The savings from reduced health costs due to less air pollution will more than offset the costs of financing for low carbon development, renewable energy and other measures needed to ensure a strong climate accord.
This was a key message delivered by former Nigerian Finance Minister Dr Ngozi OkonjoIweala, incoming chair of the Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, at an informal meeting at the Paris Climate talks with member states concerned with health aspects of climate change.
United Nations member states are in the second week of negotiations of a new climate agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Among the issues that remain key to a successful climate accord are the means by which financial support for climate change adaptation and mitigation can be mobilized and maintained.
One answer to that, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala suggested, would be to look more systematically at how subsidies for fossil fuels can be diverted to cleaner and renewable energy sources, and how savings thus obtained from reducing the health costs of air pollution can be a key to unlocking barriers.
“National commitments (to climate actions) are based upon getting some finance, up front,” she noted. “I think the heavy costs from air pollution emissions is what we really have to look at."
“One of the biggest gains that can be made from the cutdown on carbon emissions is the health benefit,” she added. “I personally believe that getting a mention of health into the agreement will bring it home, in terms of savings lives, in terms of health.”
According to a recent IMF report, globally some $600 billion annually is spent directly on fossil fuel subsidies. However, the total cost of fuel subsidies amounts to some $5.3 trillion annually, about half of which is in the form of health costs from the air pollution generated by many of the most carbon-intensive energy technologies. Shifting to more efficient low carbon and renewable energy technologies, therefore, can generate huge health savings that should be considered in the climate equation as well, said Okonjo-Iweala.
If even a small portion of the funds now spent on fossil fuel subsidies were immediately diverted to low carbon energy technologies, they would cover much of the costs of the new financing required for a strong climate agreement, and curbing pollution and climate emissions would in turn generate even larger health benefits, said Okonjo-Iweala.
“There are some macro finance opportunities that the world needs to look at, so instead of wasting our time, let us push on those,” she said. “I am not as pessimistic on the financing, but we need to think smarter, work harder and identify the pressure points.”
According to WHO, air pollution deaths already total some 7 million people annually. Direct climate change impacts in terms of increased heat stress, malaria and other disease incidence, and under-nutrition are meanwhile expected to total some 250,000 deaths annually by 2030, at the current pace of climate change, noted WHO Assistant Director-General Dr Flavia Bustreo.
“Air pollution comes from the same processes as climate change – so drivers of climate change and drivers of one of the largest public health burdens of disease are very much the same,” notes Dr Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, of WHO’s climate change team leader in the Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health. “Diarrhoea and undernutrition – major killers of children in low- and middle-income countries, are highly climate sensitive.”
From the viewpoint of the global health sector, the most important outcome of the Paris talks is to have a strong climate agreement.
But many in the health community would like to see a strong agreement that makes explicit reference to health, particularly as a key element of adaptation and a key factor in mitigation actions. Health was central to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) when it was created in 1992, but there is currently only one reference to health in the current text of the agreement.