Introduction by Croakey: Responding to the escalating health threats posed by climate change is one of six strategic priorities for the World Health Organization (WHO) under its newly approved work program for 2025-2028.
The 65-page document, adopted this week by the World Health Assembly in Geneva, warns that the escalating pace of climate change and environmental degradation is emerging as “a major threat to human health in the 21st century”.
Global temperatures are continuing to rise and are expected to exceed 1.5C over pre-industrial levels by 2030, says the document, which signals a focus on developing climate-resilient health systems, and lower-carbon health systems and societies.
The WHO will also promote actions that improve health and mitigate climate change across the energy, food, transport and urban systems.
Meanwhile, in Australia, many public health advocates have been left disappointed by the recent Federal Budget’s lack of investment in climate health initiatives, as well as its general lack of focus on climate health matters.
Alison Barrett asked a range of health leaders for their advice on ‘what next’?
Alison Barrett writes:
Health professionals, including medical colleges, nursing bodies and the public health community, must maintain pressure on the Federal Government to sufficiently fund the National Health and Climate Strategy and Australian Centre for Disease Control in its next budget.
This is according to public health and climate experts Professor Peter Sainsbury, Dr Robert Hall and Dr Kate Wylie.
Wylie, a GP and executive director of Doctors for the Environment Australia, said the lack of funding in the Budget for the National Health and Climate Strategy suggested the Government doesn’t really get the issues at stake.
“The entire health profession should be calling for strong government action to treat the greatest health problem facing humanity,” said Wylie.
“It is very upsetting that the various health bodies around the country did not seem to notice the lack of support for the Strategy [in the budget] and were distracted by their internal problems rather than looking at the bigger picture.”
Similarly, Professor Peter Sainsbury expressed significant disappointment that the Federal Government did not find “any money to take the National Health and Climate Strategy forward”.
Developing the Strategy was an Australian Labor Party pre-election commitment, and they kept that promise by establishing a very skilful team that have developed the strategy, according to Sainsbury.
However, there is not much point in developing and having a “national” strategy that simply sits in Canberra, he told Croakey.
“To be effective, which is desperately needed, the elements of it must be implemented and much of that depends on the state [and territory] based health services and primary healthcare providers – both of which need encouragement and resources to help them do it,” he said.
Maintain the pressure
On the national Centre for Disease Control, retired public health physician Dr Robert Hall urged the public health community to be vocal and keep up the pressure – “we need to keep pushing, still, for a good CDC”.
Hall, who has worked in public health for over 30 years, at local, state, national and international levels, noted that the Federal Government put aside money to start work on the national CDC in the previous budget.
While the Government has indicated they want to do a whole range of things in a whole range of different areas, “when the time comes, all the speed is kind of glacial”, Hall said.
“We need to think about things like obesity and physical activity and climate change…and they’re not small issues. They’re going to require action on a whole range of different fronts,” he said. “You don’t get there’s a sense that there’s a real drive to push on all this.”
Hall said it appears like most of the work on the interim CDC is being done by the Department of Health and Aged Care, “which I’m not entirely sure is the best group of people” for this task, as “they don’t have the primary responsibility for detecting and responding to emergent public health events.”
He said it’s also important that the process is not captured by academic institutions. In 2022, Hall was co-author of a detailed proposal from OzSage for the CDC.
In addition, he said it is “absolutely crucial” the CDC has the ear of, and is taken seriously by, government but is independent from government, is able to make decisions on scientific merit and do so on the basis of what it thinks, rather than what it’s told.
Advice for moving forward
Hall provided advice for advocacy efforts: “I think the most effective things are people having personal relations with policymakers. That’s always been true.”
But, you also have to bring people along with you, he said – you have to satisfy the political groups, as well as the scientific groups, and “most importantly, you have to satisfy the public. If you don’t have all of those people on side, then it’s going to be really hard”.
“You have to strike a chord with the government.”
The Australian Health Promotion Association (AHPA) highlights the importance of collective, cross-sectoral action for advocacy.
“On several occasions we have called on the Government to commit to ongoing funding for implementation, evaluation, and monitoring of the Australian CDC,” said Melinda Edmunds, AHPA President.
“The lack of new funding for the Australian CDC is a missed opportunity for the Government to drive long term better health outcomes.
“Moving forward as further information is made available on the mechanisms and cross-government structures of the CDC, we need to utilise these as opportunities for influence. Collective action for advocacy is needed and this should involve people and organisations within and outside of health promotion.”
Community and preventative health
Health consumers want to see clear and transparent communication on the next steps for both the Australian CDC and the National Health and Climate Strategy, according to Dr Elizabeth Deveny, CEO of the Consumers Health Forum of Australia (CHF).
Deveny told Croakey in in a statement that the CHF is interested in knowing more about implementation, as well as the scope of work of the CDC and how consumers will be involved in the development of, and work moving forward.
She said consumers and CHF members also want to see “preventative health strategies starting to be implemented from the next Budget onwards”.
While acknowledging the Government cannot fund every single issue in one budget, Deveny said that the CHF was disappointed to see no new funding made available to the Australian CDC or meaningful funding announced for the National Health and Climate Strategy in this year’s Budget.
We want to see government “shifting its focus to also prioritise community-based preventative health programs and measures, which will raise the level of people’s health literacy and their ability to keep themselves well,” Deveny said.
Ahead of the next Federal election, the CHF will “be raising a coalition across the health sector, to advocate with one voice, the need for the next Parliament to prioritise and fund meaningful preventative health options to all Australians”.
Federal position
The Federal Government is “still very committed to the CDC”, Health Minister Mark Butler told participants at a 2024/25 Federal Budget overview hosted by the CHF last week.
He said “we have substantial funds in last year’s Budget to fund essentially the foundational work of the CDC”.
The interim CDC is operating inside the Department of Health and Aged Care while they work out the “ultimate structure” of the new entity.
Butler said the COVID inquiry, which will be delivered to Government in September, will provide insights and recommendations that will be beneficial for the development of the CDC.
“Meanwhile, the work goes on,” he said. The Federal Government is working with states and territories to make sure the CDC has “their buy-in” – “without their buy-in, it would be a pretty useless CDC”, he said.
He expects the situation will be much clearer into next year.
Climate and Health Alliance
In its 2024/25 Commonwealth Budget Analysis, CAHA also noted disappointment that the Budget does not have funding to support the implementation of the National Health and Climate Strategy.
The analysis said that even though civil society organisations such as CAHA have been “instrumental in leading the way on climate and health for decades”, the Budget does not provide significant funding for these organisations.
In its analysis, CAHA said that while the budget contains measures that will have a positive impact on the social determinants of health, including support for housing and Medicare, it does not contain measures that directly address the climate impacts on health.
“Instead, the budget makes provisions for climate, and for health, in entirely separate tranches of funding,” they wrote.
CAHA reminds the “Commonwealth Government that the start of major investment in resilience and adaptation has to begin now, as life systems cannot support a planet that is 2.5 degrees higher than today”.
CAHA is “deeply concerned about the Government locking in a commitment to gas production for the next 26 years through the Future Gas Strategy. If a health lens was applied to how we generate energy, we would rule out gas, and invest in rapid transition to renewables.”
CAHA called for the Federal Government to:
- Urgently fund the National Health and Climate Strategy – expand capacity via personnel recruitment, collaboration with state and territory governments on implementation, health in all policies approach to implementation, collaboration with civil society, experts and community.
- Fund civil society organisations and leadership – “these organisations [including CAHA] work tirelessly, and with little funding, yet play a large role in building community awareness of climate and health challenges, building resilience in our communities, and mitigating the impact of the climate crisis on the health of ordinary Australians”.
- CAHA also support the Lowitja Institute’s funding call for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Coalition on Climate and Health.
- Ramp up investment, and emphasis, on wind and solar, which emit little to no greenhouse gases, are readily available, and cheaper than green hydrogen.
- Decarbonise Australia’s economy – eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, reinvest savings into adaptation infrastructure including health services.
Watch the CHF webinar
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the 2024-2025 Federal Budget
