The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established its Financial Mechanism to facilitate the provision and transfer of resources from developed to developing countries. T
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he Global Environment Facility became the first operating entity of the Financial Mechanism after the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC, and the GEF Council agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in 1996. This agreement placed the GEF under the guidance of the COP, as Article 11 of the Convention states that the Financial Mechanism “shall function under the guidance of and be accountable to the Conference of the Parties, which shall decide on its policies, program priorities and eligibility criteria related to this Convention.”
The yearly COPs have provided an opportunity for Parties to update and renew their guidance to the GEF. To date, there have been 145 UNFCCC COP decisions and 526 paragraphs that offer guidance to the GEF (see Table 1). In addition, the Conferences of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA) have issued 40 decisions and 115 paragraphs as guidance to the GEF (see Table 2). Key areas of Convention guidance have included: the GEF’s role as an operating entity of the Financial Mechanism, including the Paris Agreement; the GEF’s institutional and procedural reform; transparency and access to GEF funds; country engagement and empowerment; reporting on greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories; support for technology transfer; and ongoing programming in mitigation and adaptation.
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Infectious diseases cause over one billion human infections per year, with millions of deaths each year globally. Extensive health and financial burden is seen from both established and emerging infectious diseases. Infectious diseases also affect p
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lants and animals, which may pose threats to agriculture and water supplies with additional impacts on human health. This Question and Answers, prepared by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Secretariat under their joint work programme on biodiversity and health, and launched of the occasion of the International Day for Biodiversity 2020, summarizes some of the interlinkages between biodiversity and infectious diseases.
WHO is continuously monitoring and responding to the COVID 19 outbreak. This Q&A will be updated as more is known about COVID-19, how it is affecting people worldwide, and the effectiveness of interventions against the disease.
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13 May 2021
To avoid a reversal of progress from the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, new knowledge and lessons from successful programmatic innovations are urgently needed to improve TB prevention and care. Experience can provide evidence
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for innovative approaches and strategies to maintain and scale up high-quality TB services. WHO therefore called for case studies on programmatic innovations that address emerging challenges in TB prevention and care during the pandemic in order to collect and disseminate the findings to the TB community. Between November 2020 and February 2021, a total of 23 case studies relevant to the call were accepted from 19 countries in the six regions of WHO. The lessons learnt from these country activities to ensure the continuity of essential services like TB care in the face of the crippling crisis may also inform strategies for minimizing the impact of future emerging pathogens on health services.
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Known avoidable environmental risks to health cause at least 12.6 million deaths every year, and account for about one quarter of the global burden of disease (2016 data) (1). Air pollution alone causes about 7 million
deaths a year, placing it amo
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ng the top global risks to health (2). Global environmental challenges are on the rise, including climate change, rapid urbanization and increased resistance to drugs.
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Taking a multisectoral, One Health approach is necessary to address complex health threats at the human-animal-environment interface, such as rabies, zoonotic influenza, anthrax, and Rift Valley fev
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er. Such zoonotic diseases continue to have major impacts on health, livelihoods, and economies, and cannot be effectively addressed by one sector alone.
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Nature, biodiversity and health: an overview of interconnections
Urbanization, land use, global trade and industrialization have led to profound and negative impacts
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on nature, biodiversity and ecosystems across the world. The ongoing depletion of natural resources not only affects environmental conditions but also has an enormous impact on the well-being and security of societies.
This report provides an overview of the impacts of the natural environment on human health. It presents the ways nature and ecosystems can support and protect health and well-being, and describes how nature degradation and loss of biodiversity can threaten human health. It is targeted at readers who do not have extensive experience with the links between nature and health.
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Six months in, the indirect impacts of COVID-19 take a toll on health, social and economic outcomes.
The guidance provides critical considerations and practical checklists to keep schools safe. It also advises national and local authorities on how to adapt and implement emergency plans for educational facilities.
In the event of school closures
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, the guidance includes recommendations to mitigate against the possible negative impacts on children’s learning and wellbeing. This means having solid plans in place to ensure the continuity of learning, including remote learning options such as online education strategies and radio broadcasts of academic content, and access to essential services for all children. These plans should also include necessary steps for the eventual safe reopening of schools.
Where schools remain open, and to make sure that children and their families remain protected and informed.
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Prescriptions and Actionables for a Healthy and Green Recovery.
The practical steps outlined in this report aim at creating a healthier, fairer and greener world while investing to maintain and resuscitate the economy hit by the effects of COVID-19.
Policy makers, national and local decision-make
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rs and a wide array of other actors wishing to contribute to a healthy recovery can now take decisive steps by shaping the way we live, work and consume. Effects on environmental degradation and pollution and climate change will be wide ranging. WHO and partner organizations have since long been developing substantive guidance and provide support for building healthier environments for healthier populations.
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Ahead of World Malaria Day, the WHO Global Malaria Programme published a new operational strategy outlining its priorities and key activities up to 2030 to help change the trajectory of malaria trends, with a view to achieving the global malaria targets. The strategy outlines 4 strategic objectives
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where WHO will focus its efforts, including developing norms and standards, introducing new tools and innovation, promoting strategic information for impact, and providing technical leadership of the global malaria response.
In recent years, progress towards critical targets of the WHO Global technical strategy for malaria 2016-2030 has stalled, particularly in countries that carry a high burden of the disease. In 2022 there were an estimated 608 000 malaria-related deaths and 249 million new malaria cases globally, with young children in Africa bearing the brunt of the disease.
Millions of people continue to miss out on the services they need to prevent, detect, and treat malaria. Additionally, progress in global malaria control has been hampered by resource constraints, humanitarian crises, climate change and biological threats such as drug and insecticide resistance.
“A shift in the global malaria response is urgently needed across the entire malaria ecosystem to prevent avoidable deaths and achieve the targets of the WHO global malaria strategy,” notes Dr Daniel Ngamije, Director of the Global Malaria Programme. “This shift should seek to address the root causes of the disease and be centred around accessibility, efficiency, sustainability, equity and integration.”
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Adresssing climate change impacts on infrastructure: preparing for change. Fact sheet
The framework responds to the demand from Member States and partners for guidance on how the health sector and its operational basis in health syst
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ems can systematically and effectively address the challenges increasingly presented by climate variability and change. This framework has been designed in light of the increasing evidence of climate change and its associated health risks (1); global, regional and national policy mandates to protect population health (2); and a rapidly emerging body of practical experience in building health resilience to climate change (3).
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The discourse on climate change and migration has shifted from labelling migration merely as a consequence of climate
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impacts, to describing it as a form of human adaptation. This article explores the adaptation framing of the climate change and migration nexus and highlights its shortcomings and advantages. While for some groups, under certain circumstances migration can be an effective form of adaptation, for others it leads to increased vulnerabilities and a poverty spiral, reducing their adaptive apacities. Non-economic losses connected to a change of place further challenge the notion of successful adaptation. Even when migration improves the situation of a household, it may conceal the lack of action on climate change adaptation from national governments or the international community. Given the growing body of evidence on the diverse circumstances and outcomes of migration
in the context of climate change, we distinguish between reactive and proactive migration and argue for a precise differentiation in the academic debate
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The Lancet Planetary Health Volume 6, ISSUE 4, e342-e349, April 01, 2022. Human impacts on earth-system processes are overshooting several planeta
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ry boundaries, driving a crisis of ecological breakdown. This crisis is being caused in large part by global resource extraction, which has increased dramatically over the past half century. We propose a novel method for quantifying national responsibility for ecological breakdown by assessing nations’ cumulative material use in excess of equitable and sustainable boundaries.
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Climate information is critical towards strengthening the decision making among different users interested in mitigating impacts of climate related
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disasters. However, there is need for the climate users to have basic knowledge on weather and climate concepts and to a larger extend, early warning early action (EWEA) system and approach. This manual presents an opportunity for the climate users including communities to acquire basic knowledge on Early Warning Early Action and this entails; understanding risk areas, existing early warning systems, communication of early warning information and enhancing disaster preparedness through translating early warning into early actions. The EWEA manual largely target the users in different sectors and communities. The execution of the EWEA manual is planned for 3 days and this does incorporate different methods such as; PowerPoint presentation, group work discussions as well as practical exercises.
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The Manifesto was launched at a High Level Event in London on the 31st July 2019, where Emergency response mechanisms to address the Climate and Environmental Crisis are being explored. The Manifest
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o has been developed in response to the increasing international and United Nations evidence and understanding of the severity of our global climate and environmental crisis. This builds upon collaborative action to advance the InterAction Council's Dublin Charter, endorsed at its Plenary Session in 2017. The overall aim is to secure a healthy planet for the wellbeing of future generations for all, by placing the health of the planet at the heart of decision making and establishing emergency response mechanisms at global, national and community levels.
Now more than ever, we need courageous leadership to take crucial decisions and actions to secure a healthy planet for all, including the very existence of human civilization. The InterAction Council is encouraged by the boldness and energy of our younger generations, as well as the commitment expressed by the 30 organisations endorsing the Manifesto. The establishment of the Digital Platform for Planet, Place and People, a Hub of the Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health, will act as a collaborative mechanism to promote innovation and rapid responses as a common good. Going forward, we welcome everyone to become a Guardian to Secure a Healthy Planet for All, and to support this initiative in scaling up the ambitions laid out in the Manifesto.
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This paper focuses on the Sustainable Development Goals related to poverty, economic growth, inequality, health, food production and the environment. It presents concrete examples of the underlying
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and complex aspects of antibiotic resistance and its impacts across different Sustainable Development Goals. The aim of this paper is to inform and stimulate discussions on how to further advance the implementation of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance, National Action plans on Antimicrobial Resistance, as well as work within all sectors that affect and are affected by antibiotic resistance
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At a time when the world is reeling from the deepest global disruption and health crisis of a lifetime, this year’s Living Planet
report provides unequivocal and alarming evidence that nature is unraveling and that our planet is flashing red war
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ning signs of
vital natural systems failure. The Living Planet Report 2020 clearly outlines how humanity’s increasing destruction of nature is having
catastrophic impacts not only on wildlife populations but also on human health and all aspects of our lives.
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The outbreak of COVID-19 comes with unpredictable primary and secondary impacts on vulnerable and food-insecure populations across the world. Mortality and morbidity appear to be most acu
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te for elderly people, and those with underlying health conditions. At the same time, the widely anticipated economic downturn could have a more devastating effect on the world’s poor than the virus itself
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Leishmaniasis is a climate-sensitive disease. Changes in temperature, rainfall, and humidity can have strong impacts on
the sandfly vector, alteri
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ng their distribution and influencing their survival and population sizes. Increased temperatures shorten vector development time, reduce Leishmania parasite incubation time, and increase vector biting rates, allowing transmission
in areas not previously endemic for the disease. Poor and
marginalized communities will be hit disproportionately harder by
the effects of climate change, and droughts, famines, and floods
can also lead to displacement and migration of immunologically
naive people to areas where leishmaniasis is endemic, posing a
threat of leishmaniasis outbreaks.
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