Why Australia should put health at the heart of COP31

The host of next year’s COP31 will be decided this month, as Australia (in partnership with Pacific Island countries) vies with Turkey for the opportunity. If Australia prevails, we know that Adelaide will be the host city.

What we don’t know is how Australia will approach a COP presidency and meeting agenda – questions that are complicated by our status as a major fossil fuel exporter, our poor record on reducing emissions, and the increasing anger of our Pacific neighbours as climate change threatens their livelihoods.

We see at least four good reasons why Australia, if it does host COP31, should focus on the health impacts of climate change:

1. We lack the moral authority to lead on emissions reduction.

2. We have a proud history of climate-health research.

3. Health impacts are a pressing concern for the Indo-Pacific.

4. The timing is right.

Greenhouse gas emissions

During the past 30 years of climate negotiations and agreements, Australia has developed a reputation for cheating the system to avoid meaningful emissions reduction.

We have set weak emissions targets, pushed to include deforestation in baseline calculations to make “over-achievement” of targets inevitable, and insisted on using “carryover” emissions credits.

For many Australians, this lowly international status is difficult to process, accustomed as we are to proudly punching above our weight, be it at the Olympics, or in higher education, or in the liveability of our cities.

There are some signs of improvement. In 2022, the federal government increased its 2030 emissions reduction target from 26-28% to 43%, and recent projections indicate that we’re essentially on track to meet this goal. Yet the 43% target is still not in keeping with the Paris 1.5°C goal, and there’s continued government support for fossil fuels (for example, recently
extending approval for the North West Shelf gas processing plant out to 2070)..

Health impacts

Our record on emissions reduction stands in contrast to our leadership in identifying health impacts of climate change.

Australian epidemiologist Tony McMichael was one of the first to alert the world to the health dangers of climate change with his seminal 1993 book, Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species.

In 2004, he led the WHO Global Burden of Disease study that was the first attempt to quantify health impacts of climate change with disability-adjusted life years (DALYs).

The study found that the loss of 5.52 million DALYs (due to diarrhoeal diseases, malaria, unintentional injuries and deaths related to flooding, and malnutrition) was attributable to climate change worldwide in the year 2000.

In 2017, just one year after the Lancet Countdown was formed as a global climate-health monitoring system, an Australian-specific countdown was established. Australian researchers remain at the forefront of climate-health discovery, including Ollie Jay in heat health, Kathryn Bowen on the Pacific, and Yuming Guo in quantifying the health risks of bushfire smoke and floods.

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Read more The invisible killer lurking in our cities’ air

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A region at risk

The health impacts of climate change are a particularly grave concern for countries across South Asia and the Pacific, which have done the least to cause the problem.

One important finding from McMichael’s 2004 study was that climate-health impacts are not evenly distributed across the world; they’re concentrated in poorer populations close to the equator. Of the 5.52 million DALYs lost, more than 80% were in South Asia (2.57 million) and Africa (1.89 million).

A recent World Bank analysis across low and middle-income countries identified a similar pattern, with about three-quarters of the deaths caused by climate change occurring in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Pacific Island countries are among the most vulnerable to sea-level rise and climate-health impacts, with population pressures and health system deficiencies exacerbating risks of trauma from extreme weather events, heat-related illnesses, compromised safety and security of water and food, infectious diseases, respiratory illnesses, and psychosocial ill-health.

The time has come

In 2023, Australia released its first National Health and Climate Strategy. Health risks from climate change have never been greater – the latest Lancet Countdown report found that 10 of the 15 climate-related health indicators set worrying records in their most recent year of data.

Climate change is likely to cause an additional 14.5 million deaths by 2050. Yet the global response continues to be underwhelming. The launch of the Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health (ATACH) at COP26 in Glasgow was significant, then COP28 in Dubai featured the inaugural COP Health Day.

COP29 in Baku, though, did little to maintain the momentum, essentially producing a “letter of intent” to form a coalition to continue climate and health discussions.

If Australia is successful in its COP31 bid, what better way to honour the McMichael legacy than to increase the focus on health impacts of climate, and push to make health a formal topic in UN climate negotiations?

An opportunity to lead

Hosting COP31 would provide an opportunity for Australia to remould its climate image on the world stage, leaving its years of evasion and defensiveness behind.

Our 2035 emissions reduction target is due by September this year, so by the time of COP31, we may have a much more ambitious mitigation agenda to spruik – advice from the Climate Change Authority suggests that a 65-75% reduction is feasible.

South Australia is well-placed to discuss its world-leading achievements in rooftop solar and large-scale renewables.

Most importantly, though, COP31 would be an opportunity to welcome the world to Adelaide with a climate agenda that puts the protection of human health centre-stage, leveraging our impressive record of climate-health research while standing in solidarity with our Pacific neighbours.