Donors commit more than $1B for climate-health at COP 28

The United Nations’ COP 28 climate summit has resulted in multibillion-dollar announcements since opening last week. For climate and health, these commitments add up to at least $1 billion. Though advocates have welcomed the pledges they remain a drop in the ocean. The world’s needs for mitigation and adaptation range in the trillions of dollars. And there are questions about whether these announcements represent new funding. “We don't know yet whether any of this is sort of relabeled, existing funding,” Jess Beagley, policy lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance, told Devex. Some of the announcements were either part of organizations’ large funding commitments or were already announced before COP 28. Rockefeller Foundation’s $100 million commitment is part of its $1 billion commitment to advance climate solutions, which it announced in September. The $17.85 million funding from the Global Environment Facility to support select Pacific island countries was announced in July. During the Reaching the Last Mile Forum, donors also committed over $777 million to control and eventually eliminate neglected tropical diseases. Part of the pledges are for the expansion of Reaching the Last Mile Fund to reach 39 countries in Africa and Yemen, and eliminate the NTDs lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis, or river blindness, from Africa by 2030. “We do anticipate, as any large effort will, we do anticipate that there will be bumps along the way and we will find some surprises and there will be some hard places where we have to work. … But that is the ambition,” Katey Owen, director of NTDs and vaccine development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in a press briefing. Bill Gates announced the foundation’s $100 million commitment to the fund at the event, matching Reaching the Last Mile’s $100 million announcement. The U.S. Agency for International Development also committed $114.5 million to the effort. Updated, Dec. 6, 2023: This story has been updated to reflect that the $100 million announcement came from Reaching the Last Mile.