Financing Climate-Health Solutions

Overview

3.3 billion people worldwide face heightened health risks now because of climate change. To address this climate-health crisis, countries can’t wait until the next emergency. They must respond proactively, and they need the resources to do this. Yet countries often struggle to access the financing to support solutions that can both save lives and protect our planet.

By using place-based innovation, alliance building, evidence generation, and global policy engagement, The Rockefeller Foundation is working to close the estimated $10 billion gap in adaptation finance for health systems to ensure that countries get more access to climate-health financing that responds to their priorities and the needs of vulnerable communities.

Why it Matters

Climate funding and health funding shouldn’t be an either/or scenario. We need to adapt systems to leverage the co-benefits of both, enhancing the effective use of funds to impact health, climate, and their interconnected outcomes.

>0%%
of National Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement include health considerations [World Health Organization]
$0BillionBillion
low- and middle-income countries require at least $11 billion USD per year this decade to adapt to climate and health impacts [United Nations]
0%%
of adaptation funding and 0.5% of overall climate funding is dedicated to improving health outcomes [World Health Organization]

Featured Content

Guiding Principles for Financing Climate and Health Solutions
Launched at COP28 in December 2023, the Guiding Principles establishes a shared vision for financing that will rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to improve health, protect people from the range of climate risks to health, and build resilient, environmentally sustainable health systems. To date, the Guiding Principles has been endorsed by nearly 50 organizations, including multilateral development banks, donor countries, climate funders, health funders, philanthropies, civil society, and countries most impacted by climate change.
Climate and Health Financing Needs
On behalf of the Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health (ATACH), The Rockefeller Foundation, in partnership with the World Health Organization, conducted in-depth interviews with eight countries to better understand climate and health priorities, experiences, and current unmet needs to accessing financing for climate and health solutions. The findings were released at the ATACH Annual Meeting in March 2024.
One World, One Health. A Strategic Vision for a Resilient Global Health System
In this T7 Policy Brief, The Rockefeller Foundation, Global Fund, and COP28 Presidency highlight the critical role that G7 countries play in promoting integrated financing of climate action in the global health architecture to ensure that health is considered an integral part of the climate adaptation agenda. The brief was release ahead of the G7 Summit in June 2024.
Climate Change and Global Health: Moving From Rhetoric to Action
The impacts of climate change on health are complex and will be expensive to remedy. Even so, opportunities to make investments that enhance health and build resilient health systems are multiplying. The World Health Assembly offers the next moment for countries to recalibrate national and global health priorities to confront climate change and meet the needs of those most vulnerable to a warming world. Translating the assembly's decisions into action through sustainable financing will fall to the growing community that is bringing the health, climate, and development sectors around the world together.

Our Approach

•Quality: Existing funds are better harmonized and leveraged towards high-impact, country-driven CxH priorities.
•Quantum: Additional financing is made available and accessible to accelerate and deliver CxH adaptation priorities.
•Joint Action: Climate-health funders take action towards a shared goal and from a shared evidence-base.
•Sustainability: CxH financing momentum translates into more sustainable funding for health systems resilience building.

Impact Stories

Turning a Spotlight on Climate and Health Financing
More than 40 percent of the world's population faces climate change-linked health risks right now, but only 0.5% of overall climate funding is allocated to enhance health outcomes. We have a plan to change that.

Our People

Director, Health Policy and Communications

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