The Feeling That We Must Know: Health System Strengthening to Build Resilience to Climate Change in Kiribati and Tuvalu

Abstract

In 1993, following on from the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio, the World Health Assembly called for coordination between UN bodies and multilateral financial mechanisms to enact a global strategy focused on the intersection of health and the environment. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the World Health Organization has yet to be accredited to any of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change financial mechanisms, and there are no dedicated health funding facilities within the global climate finance architecture. Because the health burdens of climate change are inequitably distributed, with the bulk of the negative consequences felt by poorer countries with negligible carbon footprints, global health delivery will play an integral role in mitigating the inequitable effects of climate change. To do so effectively, the health sector will need to make inroads into capturing some of the resources made available by the burgeoning field of climate finance. This research entailed participation in a nascent United Nations Development Programme/World Health Organization project entitled 'Building Resilience of Health Systems in Pacific Island LDCs [Least Developed Countries] to Climate Change', one of the first examples of health sector leveraging of climate finance. The project is slated to be rolled out in four of the most resource poor, climate change vulnerable countries in the world: Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. The research first utilized the health policy and systems research methodology to delineate instances of health-related initiatives within the existing climate finance architecture. This was then coupled with interviews of ‘positive outliers’, viz. those policymakers and stakeholders who have successfully utilized climate finance for health. Finally, the findings were employed to suggest strategies for the health sector to appropriately leverage climate finance going forward.