Health & Climate peer group : retrospective
The first Health & Climate peer group for European funders and foundations, organised by the Philanthropy Coalition for Climate, Active Philanthropy and Stiftung Mercator was a great introduction to the interconnections between these two thematics. Indeed, climate health is the greatest 21rst century challenge and at the same time, it can be a great opportunity, if we choose to act and finance environmental solutions.
Dr Eckart von Hirschhausen, a physician, science journalist and the founder of Stiftung Gesunde Erde – Gesunde Menschen ( Healthy Planet – Healthy People Foundation) has shown several parallels between health and climate. For example, the number one biggest threat of environmental degradation on health is air pollution. As air doesn’t have any fronteers, the air pollution affect the globe in is entirety. But Europe has also been specifically threated this summer, by heatwaves as well as flooding, such as Germany and Belgium experienced it. Thus, new disease are appearing, like the Chikungunya bringed by the tiger mosquitos.
This great presentation was followed by different group of discussions, to examinate first, how these issues could be arised in our daily work, thus which are the barriers for integretaing climate change in the work on health and finally to consider the opportunities of connecting health and climate issues within a foundation. The main identified barriers is first, the lack of attention to preventing the symptoms
The main barriers identified were, firstly, the lack of interest of health systems in preventing disease rather than curing symptoms; the lack of knowledge and identification of cause and effect; the urgency of diseases, as symptoms may appear months or even years later. Regarding the consideration of the issue within foundations, many opportunities were raised, such as mobilising young people, acquiring new audiences within the health field, investing in innovative solutions, increasing communication on these two global issues.
The event identified interconnections between two global issues and the exchanges between peers were fruitful. For more information on future exchanges on this topic, please contact Karalyn Gardner.
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