The conversation around climate change often centers around the dramatic, and at times deadly, weather phenomena that it supercharges: heat waves, ferocious storms, droughts, floods, wildfires, etc. But what about dengue fever and malaria? We take a comprehensive look at the symptoms of a warming world.
Also in today’s edition: A green deal could be a raw deal for the global south, and the European Investment Bank dabbles in defense.
+ It’s time for our Devex monthly quiz wrap. Can you ace our five-item quiz on June’s most-read globaldev stories?
An overdue conversation
Climate change has many faces, and human health is one of them. But the nexus between climate and health has often been relegated to the sidelines, although as my colleague Sara Jerving reports, that’s beginning to change.
The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai last year gave health a more prominent place on the agenda, which led to more discussions, political commitments, and pledged funding.
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But there's a difference between recognizing the linkage and responding to it with actual investments, said attendees at the recent Forecasting Healthy Futures summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, which will host this year’s COP.
"We need to be doing things. And by doing things, I mean, not announcing financial commitments, and not announcing plans or pilots — but together we need to be ensuring that countries are enabled to be actually doing things on the ground that impact where people are most at risk,” Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, told the audience. “We don't have the luxury of time.”
Health doesn’t have the luxury of money either. The world spent almost $1.3 trillion in annual climate investments in 2021-2022 — but only 2% of adaptation funding and 0.5% of multilateral climate funding were funneled toward projects that protect or improve health.
“Too often, ministries of health are still sidelined in the climate conversation,” said Martin Edlund, CEO of Malaria No More, pointing to the 2022 floods in Pakistan as a tipping point.
Those floods created perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes, causing malaria and dengue cases to spike. Meanwhile, massive cholera outbreaks erupted as sewage-infused flood water contaminated drinking water, and routine illnesses became life-threatening as people stuck on inland islands couldn’t reach care.
“The realization that the world is having is that this is no longer about polar bears on ice drifts,” Edlund said. “It's about the images that we saw in Pakistan of families floating their children in makeshift rafts to try to escape a flood that covered 30% of the landmass.”
Read: What’s next for the climate and health agenda?
+Listen: For last week’s episode of our weekly podcast series, Sara sat down with Devex Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar and WHO Foundation CEO Anil Soni to discuss the main talking points from the Forecasting Healthy Futures summit and other global health stories.
An out-of-control fever
“If there were a poster child for climate’s impact on health, it’s arguably dengue fever.”
— Martin Edlund, CEO, Malaria No MoreEdlund has the stats to back this up. Dengue has exploded in the Americas, with Latin America and the Caribbean reporting 4,500 deaths and 9.3 million cases this year — twice the number of cases reported all of last year. But it's not just the Americas — over the past two decades there’s been a tenfold increase in cases of dengue globally. It’s the fastest-growing communicable disease.
And the number of mosquito-borne infections is only expected to climb as the world warms up and the deadly little buggers traverse new altitudes and latitudes. In fact, a stunning 4.7 billion people are estimated to be at risk for dengue by 2070.
“All signs point towards a worsening dengue problem globally, not just confined to any one part of the world,” warned Eng Eong Ooi of the Duke-NUS Medical School.
Read: Dengue, the ‘poster child’ for climate change's impacts on health
A raw deal
Given the ugly side effects of climate change, a new European Union Green Deal seems like common sense — on the surface, at least. That “deal” comprises a package of sustainable finance regulations that can “accelerate private financial flows” while achieving “a green, just and resilient recovery in our partner countries.”
Except those rules could unjustly hurt low- and middle-income countries by miring potential investors in “impractical” red tape, an alliance of development finance institutions warns.
The EDFI Association, representing the private finance arms of 15 European governments, says the rules will backfire in LMICs, where they primarily invest — because investors will be unable to obtain all the data they will be required to disclose.
“The regulations are good and well-crafted, when applied to the European marketplace,” James Brenton, EDFI’s sustainable finance and impact adviser, tells my colleague Rob Merrick. “But we are European investors who don't invest in the European marketplace, so we find ourselves subject to regulations that have clearly not been written for the places where we actually work. That's where the challenges come in.”
Read: DFIs warn 'impractical' EU Green Deal rules will harm global south (Pro)
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Indefensible shift?
The European Investment Bank is joining forces with NATO to direct more private capital funds into new defense and security technologies, as part of its controversial shift into greater defense financing.
A memorandum of understanding, signed in Brussels, aims to make it easier for EU companies to attract investors through the design of new financial products and by sharing best practices, Rob tells me.
It will also see the EIB and NATO’s venture capital fund work with the European Commission “where its potential involvement may prove beneficial.” The bank is the European Union’s financing arm, owned by its member states.
In April, the bank drew fire with a rules “update” removing the requirement that investments in dual-use items and technologies — such as surveillance, military mobility, border control, critical infrastructure protection and drones — must be for civilian use primarily.
However, member states stepped back from lifting its ban on investing in “ammunition and weapons” — as the EU Commission and European Parliament wanted — fearing the impact on the bank’s prized environmental, social, and governance mark and credit rating, and therefore on borrowing costs.
Background reading: ‘Critical moment’ as EIB wrestles over move into weapons financing
Networking your way into the UN
The United Nations seems like a vast bureaucracy that’s tough to break into. But the recruitment process for U.N. consultants can be curiously informal compared to what candidates applying for full-time staff jobs with a U.N. agency experience. “It’s still very much through networks” that roles are ultimately obtained, according to Loksan Harley, co-founder of the Impact Consulting Hub, who spoke at a recent Devex Careers event.
“Networking is so incredibly important in consulting, whether it's for the U.N. or other NGOs. You're just much more likely to be [hired] because of how the work is structured [and] because of how long recruitment processes can take for some U.N. agencies,” said fellow panelist Nicole Hosein, who’s done consulting projects for UN Women and other agencies.
Harley and Hosein shared insights into many more aspects of consulting for the U.N., including “scalable” versus “nonscalable networking, how to set and negotiate rates, and how to navigate vague contract language so you don’t wind up with a mountain of work.
Read: 3 things that may surprise you about UN consulting roles (Career)
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In other news
Two Tearfund aid workers died following an attack on their convoy Sunday in North Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. [AP via AfricaNews]
Sierra Leone on Tuesday enacted a law that criminalizes marrying girls under 18, which carries at least 15 years jail term and fines of more than $2,000. [France 24]
The World Bank approved a $208 million grant to Zambia to help the country cope with the effects of drought. [DW]
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About the author
Anna Gawel
Anna Gawel is the Managing Editor of Devex. She previously worked as the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat, the flagship publication of D.C.’s diplomatic community. She’s had hundreds of articles published on world affairs, U.S. foreign policy, politics, security, trade, travel and the arts on topics ranging from the impact of State Department budget cuts to Caribbean efforts to fight climate change. She was also a broadcast producer and digital editor at WTOP News and host of the Global 360 podcast. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Maryland in College Park.
