Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity

Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature around the globe. This poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth.After this summer, the list of destructive impacts stemming from climate change is at once more familiar, remarkable and terrifying: Sea-level rise, ocean acidification and desertification led to increasingly devastating extreme weather events such as fires, cyclones, hurricanes, floods and droughts across the world.While these events are increasing, literally in our backyards, the countries that are most likely to experience their grave impacts are the world’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs), points out the World Economic Forum.This is particularly problematic as these countries lack critical financing to support climate-resilient measures and infrastructure, and also rely extensively for income on ocean-based sectors, particularly in small-island developing states (SIDS).The urgency of the challenge is why it is time for the global financial architecture to seriously consider blended finance – defined by the OECD as the strategic use of development finance for the mobilisation of additional finance towards sustainable development in developing countries – as an essential tool to deliver the necessary investment to support aggressive climate action.The World Bank estimates that up to 1.9% of the world population is at risk of falling into extreme poverty due to the effects of climate change – most of them concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It adds that food prices are the most important factor impacting sub-Saharan Africa, while health effects, natural disasters and food prices are all important in the South Asian context. Development finance represents the major source of international climate finance flows to developing countries, including LDCs. By aligning activities and finance with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, development cooperation providers – such as governments and grant-giving institutions – can support LDCs in accelerating the transformation to zero-emissions pathways, implementing measures for adaptation to adverse climate impacts, and building climate resilience.“Yet, current efforts to mobilise private capital for climate action in LDCs are far from being up to the task,” WEF says.Despite the commitment of developed countries to jointly provide and mobilise $100bn of public and private climate finance to developing countries annually through 2025, total climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries for developing countries only reached $78.9bn in 2018. The latest OECD data show that while the volume of private finance for climate action in LDCs is increasing over time and accelerated in recent years, it still accounts for only 7% of all private finance mobilised. Undoubtedly, climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. The impacts are already harming health through air pollution, disease, extreme weather events, forced displacement, food insecurity and pressures on mental health. Every year, environmental factors take the lives of around 13mn people, according to the UN.Meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement could save about a million lives a year worldwide by 2050 through reductions in air pollution alone.