Report Summaries

Climate change and health:Global resilience
reportThis is a summary of the following paper: World Health Organization (2024)
Climate change and health – Draft resolution proposed by Barbados, Brazil, Ecuador, Fiji, Georgia, Kenya, Moldova, Monaco, Netherlands (kingdom of the),Panama, Peru, Philippines, Slovenia, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA77/A77_ACONF7-en.pdf

This is a summary of the following
paper: UNICEF, World Food
Programme, Standing Together
for Nutrition et al (2024) Global
resilience report: Safeguarding thenutrition of vulnerable children,women, families and communities
in the context of polycrisis.
https://micronutrientforum.org/wp-content/
uploads/2024/05/Global-resilience-report-FINAL.pdf

A draft resolution

In May 2024, the 77th World
Health Assembly passed a Resolution on Climate Change and
Health, emphasising the serious
impact of climate change on global
health and calling for urgent, integrated action to address the profound impacts of climate change on health andnutrition. Climate change is identified
as a significant threat to public health,affecting well-being through extreme
weather events, changing ecosystems,and driving up diseases.
The resolution highlights that extreme weather and climate change
threaten food security, leading to malnutrition in all its forms. It recognises this is a complex issue that requires
integrated approaches to address. It
acknowledges that climate change
exacerbates health inequalities, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls. It
stresses the need for a comprehensive
approach to tackle these health challenges and address the root causes ofclimate-sensitive health issues.
The resolution calls for coordinated action to build sustainable and climate-resilient health systems. This
includes integrating climate considerations into health policies and fostering collaboration across various sectors
to address the interlinkages between theenvironment, the economy, health, nutrition, and sustainable development. It
advocates for a "health-in-all-policies"
approach, ensuring that climate adaptation and mitigation strategies include© WHO / Pierre Albouy

Closing Plenary meeting of the 77th
World Health Assembly in Geneva

health and nutrition considerations. It
also emphasises the need for international cooperation, financial support,
and the sharing of knowledge and technologies to build climate-resilient healthsystems. The value of initiatives such as
the COP27 Initiative on Climate Action
and Nutrition in helping drive a global
shift on climate and health action is acknowledged. By adopting these measures, the resolution aims to enhance
the ability of health systems to respondto the nutritional and health challenges
posed by climate change.
For more information on the 77th
World Health Assembly, please visit
https://www.who.int/news-room/events/
detail/2024/05/27/default-calendar/
climate-health-events-at-wha77

A note from the Field
Exchange editors

The importance of a WHO resolution
lies in its ability to set global healthpriorities and mobilise international action. Resolutions by WHO canguide national policies, direct funding, and stimulate research and innovation. By formalising commitments
to address climate change and health,
WHO resolutions can drive countries
to integrate these issues into their
public health strategies, ensuring acoordinated and effective response.
This global alignment can help secure
the necessary resources and political
will to implement changes that protect and improve health in the contextof climate change.

Recently, the world has experienced a devastating
combination of factors – a ‘polycrisis’ – that is deepening food and nutrition insecurity. The knock-on
effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, climatic andeconomic crises, and new and protracted conflicts are all contributing. However, despite challenges, many governments
have demonstrated notable capacity to safeguard their mostvulnerable populations. These case studies provide lessons forgovernment policymakers and funders to prepare for ongoingand future crises.
The number of acutely malnourished (wasted) children,and the number of people who are moderately or severely foodinsecure, has risen sharply and still remains above pre-pandemic levels. Wasting among children, adolescent girls, andwomen increased by 20–25% between 2020 and 2022 in thecountries most affected by the global food and nutrition crisis.
Women were disproportionately affected, as the food insecurity gender gap increased by 2.5 times. An estimated 47 million
additional women and girls fell into poverty.
Beyond the direct health and economic impacts on individuals and families, these crises disrupt the already fragile
systems – food, health, education, water and sanitation, andsocial protection – that support access to nutritious foods, essential nutrition services, and positive feeding and care practices for children and women.
However, policy lessons can be learned from the positive
impacts that were observed when some governments purposively invested in strengthening systems that support nutrition. Adopting flexible delivery platforms for essential nutrition services, prioritising support for the most vulnerable, andadapting and scaling social protection programmes are examples of this. Governments also strengthened communities’ capacity, engagement, and empowerment, recognising them as
the ‘first responders’ in a crisis and as essential contributors tosafeguarding nutrition. The use of innovative digital technologies and strong coordination platforms also enabled systems
to better adapt in the face of crisis. The detailed findings fromthis report are beyond the scope of this summary. However,based on lessons learned, the report does offer several policy
and programme actions to strengthen the nutrition resilienceof systems, before, during, and after a crisis:First, put in place policies and programmes that enable
all systems to be adaptive, absorptive, and transformative inthe face of future shocks and crises. Second, increase the resilience capacity of key systems to maximise the preventionof malnutrition in countries most vulnerable to polycrisis.
Third, strengthen the predictability and flexibility of funding
to enable the building of stronger and more resilient systems.
Fourth, strengthen the capacity, engagement, and empowerment of communities as participants and contributors to thenutrition resilience of systems. Fifth, strengthen data collection and build robust information systems to better target vulnerable households.

FIELD EXCHANGE ISSUE 73, July 2024 www.ennonline.net/fex

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