REPORT FROM COP 28 CLIMATE CONFERENCE IN DUBAI

Interview with Beth Gillespie, MD, MPH, Board Member (edited for brevity)

In December 2023, board member Beth Gillespie, MD, MPH, attended the first week of the COP28 summit in Dubai and provided this interview. COP 28 convenes the "Conference of the Parties" implementing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Listen to Dr. Gillespie's keynote presentation at the WHO pavilion here.

Q: In what capacity did you attend COP28?

A: I was a delegate from the University of Colorado, which allowed me entrance into the Blue Zone, where the negotiations happen. In the blue zone, you can technically interface with negotiators and go to any meetings that aren’t invitation only.

Q: Who sponsored your delegation?

A: My entire trip was sponsored by the Climate and Health Foundation (CHF) which does amazing work in the United States and internationally to strengthen health voices advocating for climate action. The Foundation has sponsored the University of Colorado School of Medicine Climate and Health Science Policy Fellowship for at least six years now - something I was able to take advantage of 2021-2022. For the last three years, they’ve hosted a climate and health reception where all the major players attending COP with a climate and health agenda can gather to network. This year, roughly 300 people came. Over the past couple years attending CHF events at COP, I have had the privilege of speaking with the Sustainability Director of the UK’s National Health Service, the President of the World Health Organization, climate and health disability activists from Africa, and medical student leaders from all over the world.

This year, CHF sponsored around 50 people from all over the world to attend COP. Aside from faculty and fellows from the University of Colorado School of Medicine, our group included climate and health fellows from Harvard, a public health doctor from Australia, environmental youth activists, and others.

Everybody from our delegation stayed in the same hotel and enjoyed informal meals together.  Being together in the same space was probably the most amazing thing about the conference.

Q. How did delegates interact? What were the health concerns?

A: There is actually a lot of planning leading up to each COP. The major issues are decided ahead of time, informally and within formal venues such as previous years’ COPs. Policy organizations like the Global Climate and Health Network spend a lot of time strategizing their approach to negotiations. Healthcare Without Harm International is a key advocate as well.

One member of our delegation is a policy PhD fellow from the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Her major goal was to follow the Global Stocktake (GST), a UN-led process that takes place every five years to evaluate the collective progress made towards the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change. This was the first that they were coming back to check on that progress officially. There was another group tracking damages and loss from climate disasters. There's this big disparity among the countries that are responsible for climate change and then the ones that feel the big brunt of it. And they're trying to bring more equity to that whole situation.

People sat down to strategize how they were going to advocate for health-smart policies in the official negotiations. Because global strategy is really important. For example, we may think that we need to phase out fossil fuels, but maybe we can't push for that the whole way this time because we don't want to lose ground in other areas. Although it was hard to track real time decisions,it was really interesting just to get a glimpse into the nuts and bolts of these activities.

Q: What were your takeaways? What struck you the most?

A: I think I appreciate a little bit more why it is so difficult to reach consensus at an international scale on something like fossil fuel phase out. One of the reasons why negotiations are so slow and why they have to be so particular about the wording and what they actually approve is, final wording must be approved unanimously by each member country. Second, in many countries, international agreements are adopted immediately as the law of the land. Not like in the U.S. 

One of the biggest historic moments for health at COP28 was to dedicate one of the 14 days to “Health Day'', where they established the COP28 UAE Declaration on climate and health. Close to 150 out of the nearly 200 member countries have signed it at this point. The declaration was a big deal - conversations in the What’s App health group addressed ways to influence official delegates from countries that hadn’t yet signed the declaration to sign. The declaration basically says that we need to incorporate health in every decision that we make that affects climate. When a country signed, they would describe everything that they were doing, why they signed on and what their end of the agreement was. That was really unique because I think it sent a signal that health plays a major role, that health is one of the primary human rights that's affected by climate change. And we are taking an international stance on this.

Q: How much focus is on mitigation/prevention of climate change and how much is on response?

A: I think prevention - or climate change mitigation - is something that we need to invest in. But the consequences of climate change are happening now and people are being affected now, so we also need to invest in health protections for people and communities that are already facing things like heat-related illness, hurricanes, drought, and food insecurity. From an international perspective, I’ve noticed a shift in priorities. We’d like to think we can prevent the worst health consequences of climate change by reducing emissions now. It’s important for all nations - especially high income ones - to make ambitious emissions goals now. It’s hard to admit we already have a problem, much less have to invest in that problem, but I would say there was an even split between adaptation and mitigation at COP28.

Q: What was your part? Do you have a last thought?

A: I participated in one panel in the Climate and Health Foundation Pavillion and then gave a keynote presentation at the WHO Pavilion on the importance of having a transdisciplinary approach to address climate change. You can listen to the recording of my presentation here.

I came back feeling overwhelmed, but also inspired that there were so many amazing people working on tackling climate change… a lot of them were really investing their careers in finding a solution or finding their one solution to the problem. We as an international community can choose to contribute to a problem we inherited from past generations, or, we can all do our part to make sure we hand a healthier world down to future generations who had nothing to do with climate change. I’d like to share a quote I heard recently that comes from Bill McKibben. In answer to a dilemma many of us may face: “The most effective thing you can do about climate change as an individual is to stop being an individual” and collaborate with others on finding solutions.

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