As health actors ramp up their game on climate change, in advance of the next UN Climate Conference (COP 29), the fact that global warming poses an ‘existential threat’ to health has become almost cliché. 

From extreme heat and flooding to the impact of drought on hunger and fossil fuel emissions that drive hazardous air pollution, the multiple, inter-related challenges remain difficult for policymakers to appreciate and even for scientists to measure – using classical methods of health research.   

Even so, global health actors are digging deeper beneath truisms in an effort to map, track and address a vast web of interactions – as well as synergies that could be obtained from more sustainable policies.  But as long as the world’s governments continue to pour billions of dollars of investments and trillions into fossil fuel subsidies, they face an upward battle. Meanwhile, the Green Climate Fund funded only one renewable energy project in Africa in the past four years.