Former British PM Brown says climate change is more deadly than disease
Gordon Brown, former British prime minister, told the Cop26 summit in Glasgow that climate change will take many more lives than diseases such as the coronavirus over the next 50 years unless wealthy countries pay billions to address global warming.
Immediate action was required to limit global temperature rises to within 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels to save millions of lives, Mr Brown said yesterday.
Countries that are the least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions were the most likely to bear the brunt of drought, flooding and increasing deaths from diseases, he said.
One of the main themes of the summit in Scotland is to “keep 1.5°C alive”, but officials said they must resolve a series of disagreements to strike a deal in the final days of the event.
Speaking at a health-focused session, Mr Brown – also formerly Britain’s finance minister and UN special envoy for global education – said world leaders needed to make good on the promise to raise $100 billion to ensure a world that will be habitable in the future.
“If we don’t reach the target we have set of $100bn on climate finance for developing countries, we will deprive them of the opportunity not only to build coastal defences and renewable industries but build the healthcare systems necessary for resistance to droughts, famine and also pollution,” he said.
“Although Covid has been a deadly disease, climate change will take more lives in the next 50 to 100 years than anything that that disease will do.”
In 2015, industrialised nations pledged to raise $100bn a year by 2020 to help poorer countries adapt and prepare, but the first target is not expected to be reached until 2023.
Mr Brown said draft conclusions for Cop26 indicated that the target would not be met at the summit.
He was speaking after a group of 50 countries committed themselves to developing health services that could cope with changes to the climate.
The nations included the UAE, US, UK and Fiji.
Health systems contributed up to 5 per cent of global emissions, and 14 of the countries committed to the net zero by 2050 goal.
Britain’s state-owned National Health Service hopes to be one of the first to declare net zero for facilities and suppliers. The conference heard of the struggles of Fiji, which has been hit by major cyclones and flooding linked to climate change.
It said it needed to work to keep hospitals open during “superstorms”, move medical centres to higher ground and ensure renewable energy supplies are in place in case of power cuts.
Satyendra Prasad, Fiji’s ambassador to the UN, told the conference that early warning systems were saving lives, but more people were dying from waterborne diseases brought by flooding and extreme weather than major catastrophes.
A World Health Organisation survey launched this week showed that the majority of countries included health in their national climate plans but those lacked detail.
A record number of health leaders are at Cop26. More than 45 million health professionals, representing two thirds of the world’s health care workforce, signed a letter urging governments for stronger action.
“The future of health must be built on systems that are resilient to the impact of epidemics, pandemics and other emergencies, but also to the impacts of climate change,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO.
This included extreme weather and the increasing burden of diseases related to air pollution and a warming planet, he said.
The future of health must be built on systems that are resilient to the impact of epidemics, pandemics and other emergencies
DR TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS WHO Director General