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COP28 & Copernicus: Health, Sustainability, and Data Approaches for Climate Change Challenges
 

Authors: Madeline Roberts, PhD, MSPH
              Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, MPH

Two major informers of the state of global climate took place within weeks of each other, COP28 and the release of the Copernicus Report (more on the latter below).

COP28 (shorthand for Conference of the Parties, 28^th meeting) was held in Dubai from November 30 to December 13, 2023. This United Nations climate summit has been held almost annually since the first meeting in Berlin in 1995. Some of the main duties of the COP are to review the Parties emission inventories and to generate actionable steps to mitigate climate change.
 

The biggest win? Health was a key theme at COP28 and had the first-ever “Health Day.” Day 4 at COP28 was unique: It was the first time ever that global leaders at COP dedicated an entire day to the health implications and challenges linked to rising temperatures. As the WHO Director General said in his address to delegates:

“For far too long, health has been a footnote climate discussion. No more, after what we have seen starting today. We are long overdue for talks around environmental health, rising sea levels, and melting glaciers to include the direct impacts of such climate shocks on human health”.

Dr Maria Neira, Director of WHO Public Health and Environment, highlighted the need to study the increased cases of diseases such as malaria, Dengue fever, and lung cancer that are attributable to environmental factors.

One hundred and twenty-three countries signed the COP28 Declaration on Climate and Health—a strong signal to sound the alarm on severe health implications if there is inaction moving forward.

And, rightfully so. The health implications of climate change include changes in disease distribution (often related to vectors, such as mosquitoes), waterborne diseases, heat-related illness, and agricultural production leading to food supply issues. We have previously written on attribution science which uses computational and statistical modeling to differentiate between anthropogenic global warming and expected variability in weather patterns, and the need for risk management and mitigation systems.

There were a few big wins in the health and climate space during COP28:
 

What were some of the highlights outside of health?

Among the most notable outcomes of COP 28 were consensus around “transitioning away from all fossil fuels to enable the world to reach net zero by 2050” and “a specific target to triple renewables and double energy efficiency by 2030.”

Other highlights included the conversation around regenerative food and sustainable fashion. Estimates (data visualization by Our World in Data, shown below) place the total burden of food and agriculture between 25 to 35% of global greenhouse emissions. Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome noted about COP28 “The food day was really important and brought forward several pledges that we were part of, indicating how important it is to shift towards a regenerative food system. This was one of the key outcomes.” Approaches to regenerative agriculture include crop diversification, restoring soil carbon content, and minimizing soil disturbances. One example of work being done in this area is The Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration Impact Program (FOLUR) initiative by the World Bank. Among other endeavors, this program focuses on eight primary commodities—cocoa, coffee, corn, livestock, palm oil, rice, soy, and wheat—and how to achieve sustainability in these areas. FOLUR has initiated projects in high-volume producing countries for these eight commodities, and is working to curb issues such as deforestation and loss of biodiversity.

Another point of interest was the COP28 sustainable fashion show held at Expo City in Dubai (images from the show here). The fashion industry is responsible for approximately 4-8% of global greenhouse emissions, and is both a major water consumer and polluter. Interestingly, quantifying the extent to which the fashion industry contributes to environmental harms has been subject to a dearth of scientific research, sometimes resulting in erroneous data and inappropriate generalizability. In 2019, Google partnered with Stella McCartney and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to attempt to better quantify the environmental impact of the fashion industry. Together they developed a tool, Materials Impact Explorer, which aims to measure “environmental risk across regions as it relates to environmental factors such as air pollution, biodiversity, climate and greenhouse gasses, forestry and water use.” The tool is intended as a resource for textile and apparel entities to inform sustainability decisions. It is now overseen by Textile Exchange.

One of the central challenges of COP agreements and declarations is that they are not legally binding, and emissions reductions are left to the will of individual countries.

And real change is becoming more desperate. Shortly after COP28 concluded, on January 9, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service released their annual report. If you experienced last summer, it will not surprise you that the report found July and August 2023 were the hottest two months on record dating back to the 1850s. However, 2023 also was the first year in which every day surpassed 1°C above the pre-industrial level for that time of year, and nearly half of the days were greater than 1.5°C warmer than the pre-industrial level. The report attributed the notably large increase in global average temperature from 2022 - 2023 to a transition from La Niña to El Niño conditions, among other factors.
 

Perhaps most striking is the prediction that a 12-month period ending in January/February 2024 will exceed 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level. The 1.5°C mark is the Paris Agreement threshold beyond which the impacts of climate change become larger and more severe, especially for vulnerable ecosystems. Although as we approach that threshold we have already begun to experience extreme weather events. The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) represents 39 small islands and coastal states among the most vulnerable to climate change. Countries such as Fiji, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands may become uninhabitable within a few decades or less. Risks they face include evolving weather patterns and “king tides”, which, in addition to jeopardizing these low-lying nations and their crops, pose a major threat to safe drinking water.

We were struck by this comment from Sandrine Dixson-Declève, which seems to echo into other international and national arenas at present: ”It’s a sobering moment. There’s a real vacuum in leadership, and we can only ask ourselves whether our institutional systems are fit for purpose and whether we really are delivering on the great challenges that we have before us.”  ■

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