The need for visionary leadership to create positive climate and health outcomes

This past week, Hurricane Beryl roared through the southern Caribbean with devastating impacts. This is the first category 5 hurricane ever to occur this early in the hurricane season, and a troubling sign of warming sea temperatures producing volatile and dangerous storms sooner and more frequently. Even whilst the urgent disaster response phase is underway, leaders in the Caribbean are calling out the long-term drivers of climate change as the cause of worsening disasters and spelling out the years of recovery ahead that a single storm, like Beryl, forces upon them.  

I previously worked in humanitarian disaster response and was in the Caribbean in 2017 amidst the devastation of Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria. I saw the impacts of these climate disasters on people’s homes, livelihoods, and health – from the lack of refrigeration compromising insulin supplies and transforming diabetes from a manageable disease to a deadly one, to contaminated water causing water-borne infections. This last week, watching how vulnerable island nations, such as Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines, were torn apart by Hurricane Beryl, I was in tears thinking about the losses that people and the planet have experienced, and the immediate and long-term health impacts of this disaster. 

A hurricane is an acute example of a climate shock with severe health impacts. A more persistent, pernicious one is air pollution, a driver of 18% of deaths in 2018, almost one in five of all deaths. With the consequences of the climate crisis progressing in severity, the health impacts have become ever more apparent. In 2022, for example, climate events displaced 36.2 million people,  and extreme heat is worsening health risks of chronic conditions and causing acute kidney injuries. It is undeniable to say that the climate crisis is a health crisis. 

Climate and health as a system that needs an integrated solution 

Our health is influenced by the food we eat, the buildings we live and work in, the education and healthcare we receive, the genetics we inherit, and the air we breathe. These are called determinants of health. In tackling the health crisis that the climate crisis represents, we must take a systemic view of health – one that encompasses these determinants. We need to look at the root causes of health-eroding drivers and think systemically about health-creating drivers when designing solutions.  

Ultimately, we need to take a broad view of how our collective political and economic systems drive health-creating or health-eroding outcomes through our use of planetary resources, and how our trade and value chain systems work and impact the individual humans within them. It’s been said many times before, but we cannot have healthy people on an unhealthy planet. And we cannot have resilient people and communities if practices erode equality, justice and human rights. 

Forum for the Future founded the Climate and Health Coalition to accelerate the role of the private sector in driving health and climate-positive outcomes. Historically, the private sector has had positive impacts on health, for example through vaccines, as well as negative impacts, like the tobacco industry. The private sector has also generated unhealthy foods that increase the risk of diabetes, or unhealthy buildings that create the conditions for poor indoor air quality.  

The Climate and Health Coalition believes in the power of the private sector to create positive outcomes at the intersection of climate and health. The Coalition has provided guidance on what businesses can do in their direct operations, through their products and services, in their value chains, and in influencing the enabling environment. In the guidance, we include a discussion around the policy that constrains or compels corporate behaviour, and the financial flows that shape corporate strategy and focus. 

The Coalition also brings together many types of organisations that are working in the increasingly busy, burgeoning space of climate and health: NGOs, civil society organisations, multilateral institutions and academia – a positive sign! Key to a systemic approach to health is thinking and acting together, and it is in this ethos that the Coalition hosts workshops for Coalition members on systems change for health. We cannot achieve different health and climate outcomes unless we collectively act differently, and we cannot act differently until we begin to think differently about health. Adopting a mindset that can drive systemic health outcomes is key to designing co-benefits for climate and health. We must look at how we can create systemic health through regenerating our climate and natural systems, increasing community resilience, and changing organisational behaviours and actions.  

The latter is a challenge of leadership – we need visionary leaders who understand the role their organisation plays in our societies, and what they need to do to act. We define the kind of just and regenerative mindset that visionary leaders must hold as one that recognises planetary boundaries, seeks to create and distribute value in new ways, understands that humans are a fundamental part of nature, respects everyone's universal rights and potential to thrive and recognises the fundamental importance of systems change. 

Practical guidance for the private sector to act on climate and health 

A key role of the Climate and Health Coalition is providing guidance to the private sector. This allows organisations, and leaders of organisations, who are keen to positively contribute to climate and health benefits and can see their role in systemic health creation, to use practical guidance, such as the Climate and Health Toolkit, to learn from and be inspired by peer case studies. Leaders who are ready to generate and inspire change can benefit from a tailored module on the critical leadership shifts that are needed.  

The task of leadership in taking a systemic view of health to create co-benefits for climate and heath may seem daunting. Here are resources the Coalition has gathered to help get you started from modules in our toolkit, and elsewhere. 

• Understand your organisation’s role in driving health outcomes. These might be both evident and hidden. For example, a healthcare company might drive positive health outcomes through their products and services, but negative health and climate outcomes in their value chains. This is an example of an unintended consequence or perverse incentive. The Getting Started module of the toolkit can help your map your impact and decide where to prioritise action. 

• Understand your business case. This will be individual to every organisation but working out where there is “value at risk” from climate impacts on human and planetary health, and where there is “value to gain” in building resilience in your operations and through products and services oriented is a valuable strategic approach. Explore these concepts in the Business Case module.  

• Work upstream and downstream. Receiving healthcare for poor health is a downstream response. It is imperative to consider the health-harming factors that occurred upstream: the air they have breathed, the food they have consumed, their access – or lack of – to clean water and thriving nature. Thinking upstream helps design interventions that will be health-creating. For example, Bupa’s work on healthy cities – a global programme focusing on restoring and regenerating nature in cities across the world. There are more inspirational examples of upstream interventions in our Case Studies module, as well.  

• Collaborate. Responding to the kind of systemic risks that the dual crises of climate and health requires radical collaboration – the scale and urgency of the challenges require it. Being part of Coalitions, such as the Climate and Health Coalition, means joining up with cross-sector collaborations, sharing both innovative practices and the struggles and failures, and it also calls for joining together to shape the operating context, such as pushing for both health and climate considerations into all policymaking.  

• Engage across leadership. We will only accelerate change if leaders across all sectors start to think and act differently about the challenges that face our planet and humanity. If you’re in a leadership position, engage your colleagues through internal strategy, your peers through collaboration and thought leadership, and with leaders who shape your operating context, such as in government or in your investor community. For more inspiration on visionary leadership, engage with the Leadership module of the Climate and Health toolkit. 

The Climate and Health Coalition aims to mobilize and equip the private sector to accelerate the integrated transformation of our health and climate systems, towards outcomes that deliver benefits for both people and planet. Interested in joining the Coalition? Get in touch with Hannah Pathak.