To save lives, communities need the resources to move from reactive to proactive approaches in response to these health threats. However, they face large hurdles in accessing money.

More than 90 percent of national plans focused on climate mitigation include health considerations, up from 70 percent in 2019.

Despite this, only 2 percent of adaptation funding and 0.5 percent of overall climate funding is dedicated to improving health outcomes.

Without confronting the many challenges that exist within the climate-health financing space, countries will continue to struggle to invest in health with a climate lens. That’s why we and our partners have developed a set of principles meant to drive collaboration, coordination, and coherence in climate and health financing.

Countries often struggle with fragmented, inadequate, and challenging access to financing for climate and health initiatives, hindering the implementation of solutions.

But climate funding and health funding shouldn’t be an either/or scenario. Rather, we need to adapt systems to leverage the co-benefits of both, enhancing the effective use of funds to impact health, climate, and their interconnected outcomes.

With more effective use of funds, we can document the impact to advocate for the additional funding that is so sorely needed.

With our partners, including the COP28 Presidency, the Global Fund, the Green Climate Fund, and the World Health Organization, we developed 10 Guiding Principles for mobilizing climate and health funding and equitably targeting health issues triggered or worsened by climate change.

The Guiding Principles were announced during the World Climate Action Summit at COP28 during the forum’s first-ever Health Day, and were referenced by various partners alongside more than USD 400 million in commitments to the climate and health space.”

The idea, simply put, is to make sure we prioritize more easily accessible funding that aligns with country plans and priorities for those most vulnerable to climate-aggravate health impacts, and that we help direct both new and additional financing to solutions that reduce that vulnerability. The Guiding Principles are a strong start to ensuring this approach.

Read the full article about climate health and financing by Gregory Kuzmak at The Rockefeller Foundation .