The climate emergency increases the risk of pandemics

The latest

report , dedicated to the health consequences of climate change, highlights that we must prepare for the calamities ahead.

Even as covid-19 continues to spread, a recent study suggests that the probability of another pandemic increases by 2% each year.

In the coming decades, the interplay between the climate crisis and public health could create the perfect storm of devastation and disruption across the world.

The good news is that if we act now to transform healthcare systems, we can avert another covid-like catastrophe.

As with the current pandemic, the obstacles to climate change mitigation are not just scientific or technological, they are also rooted in geopolitical and market forces.

Selfishness can undermine public health, especially when it gets in the way of equitable access to resources.

Still, the international community came together to implement innovative mechanisms such as the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access Fund (COVAX), designed to remove financial barriers that prevented low-income countries from obtaining vaccines.

COVAX, an example to follow

We must launch similar mechanisms to address the global impact of climate change on health.

Although we already know many of the possible solutions, to be effective they must be implemented

disasters occur.

This is not just a moral imperative, it is also a smart economic move that is likely to reduce the overall cost of outbreaks and other weather-related catastrophes.

The poorest countries are the most vulnerable to climate change, even though they were the least responsible for its causes

The United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27), which took place in November in Egypt, highlighted that sustainability is not only related to decarbonization, electric vehicles and climate adaptation measures, such as flood defense;

it also has to do with preparing for pandemics.

More broadly, global warming is expected to shift the boundaries of the habitats of deadly pathogens, causing mosquito-borne infectious diseases such as malaria, yellow fever and dengue fever to spread as far as northern Europe. and Canada.

Simultaneously, the climate crisis threatens to increase the spread of malaria, cholera and schistosomiasis throughout the developed world.

The poorest countries are the most vulnerable

The poorest countries are the most vulnerable to climate change, even though they were the least responsible for its causes.

That is why the international community must act immediately to ensure that impoverished and marginalized communities have access to vaccines, treatments and diagnostics.

Given the devastating impact that a single virus has had on billions of lives, their livelihoods and the global economy in the last three years, it is clear that we must act urgently to counter the health threats of climate change.

The global effort to ensure the equitable distribution of covid-19 vaccines provides us with a useful model.

The Gavi and COVAX Advance Market Commitment, a donor-funded financial mechanism accelerated by the European Investment Bank, enabled people in the 92 poorest countries to get free doses.

These lower-income countries account for about half of the world's population and would otherwise have struggled to access vaccines.

More than 1.6 billion doses have been delivered through COVAX to developing countries so far, helping to ensure that 52% of their citizens are fully vaccinated (the world average is 64%).

This is a remarkable achievement, especially in the context of vaccine hoarding by developed countries, restrictions on exports of doses and the components needed to produce them, and actions by some manufacturers that appeared to prioritize profit over equity.

The obstacles to climate change mitigation are not just scientific or technological, they are also rooted in geopolitics and market forces.

An Advance Market Commitment for Climate

The success of the COVAX model demonstrates that similar innovative financial solutions can be implemented in the face of climate-related health risks.

For example, several private sector actors are currently evaluating an Advance Market Commitment for Climate that stimulates innovation and investment in climate solutions.

Similarly, mechanisms modeled on the International Vaccine Finance Facility (which uses “vaccine bonds” to anticipate funds committed by long-term donors and make them immediately available) have great potential.

Multilateralism is essential to establish these safety net mechanisms.

COVAX was only possible because it brought together the financial capacity and knowledge of more than 190 governments with partners from the private sector, civil society groups and international agencies for a cause that benefited us all.

But if this mechanism had been in place before the pandemic and equipped with contingency risk financing and surge capacity, it could have prepared the response—the world's largest, and most complex, vaccine rollout ever—even more quickly. , which ultimately would have saved more lives.

After COP27, donor governments and multilateral lenders need to consider how to adapt existing financial mechanisms to combat climate change to ensure funds are available as soon as emergencies arise.

Minimizing the full financial cost of climate-related health risks requires not only prevention, but early action as well.

These safety net mechanisms must be designed to protect the world's most vulnerable people, wherever they may be.

But the most important thing is to act now.

report warns

, the countdown to the next global health crisis has already begun.

Spanish translation by Ant-Translation

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