Climate emergency: At COP30, MSF calls for concrete actions to address the health impacts of climate change
Local and Indigenous communities must be central to solutions as repeated climate disasters worsen health for people in vulnerable situations.
The impact of the climate crisis is felt most acutely by people living in vulnerable situations, whose voices should be heard during the UN conference in Brazil.
While the health impacts of the climate emergency are increasingly clear, health discussions have historically been sidelined in high-level debates at the UN’s climate conferences. COP30, taking place from Nov. 10 to 21 in Belém, Brazil, presents a critical opportunity to elevate global awareness of the health consequences of climate change and to advance effective strategies for adaptation and resilience to climate-related challenges.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) assists communities that experience the consequences of the climate crisis on their health first-hand.
“We see the impact every day in the different locations where we work and people living in situations of vulnerability are the most affected, precisely those who contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions,” says Maria Guevara, MSF international medical secretary. “These communities are paying with their lives and health for a crisis they did not create.”
MSF is an eyewitness to the human cost of climate emergency
The reality MSF teams see is that repeated and overlapping extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts and storms, are increasing at breakneck speed in many areas. Communities are struck again before they have time or the capacity to recover from the previous disaster.
These events intensify physical risks and damage infrastructure. They also erode psychological and emotional resilience, causing complex trauma, not only from the immediate impact, but also from family separation, food insecurity and displacement.
That’s what happened in Brazil, when consecutive events of heavy rains, flooding and landslides affected the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in 2023 and 2024. Thousands of people were killed and hundreds of thousands were displaced. MSF supported affected communities with mobile clinics, medical and mental health support in shelters and training local professionals on psychological first aid.
The climate emergency exacerbates existing health and social inequities, compounding pre-existing vulnerabilities. That means the people most affected by the climate emergency are often the ones who already lack access to, or are excluded from, basic healthcare. This includes those living in conflict-affected areas, displaced families, rural communities, people living in poverty and indigenous communities.
“It is important to understand that many of these impacts are cumulative and fall on communities that generally have limited resources to react effectively. We need more early detection systems that take into account not only weather patterns but also epidemiological ones, to better understand this interrelation and react more quickly and effectively.”
Maria Guevara, MSF international medical secretary
Some of our projects respond to extreme weather events, such as cyclones and extreme flooding, which have become more frequent and intense, namely those that took place last year in Mozambique and this year in Madagascar.
Rainfall patterns are less regular, facilitating the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. These and other diseases can become more lethal if combined with malnutrition, as we saw last year in northern Nigeria.
Droughts can be more prolonged, limiting access to water, as is the case in Mozambique, and heatwaves are becoming more frequent. In Zimbabwe, drought resulted in crop failures, which in recent years drove farmers to informal mining. Then, access to safe water became a major issue for miners and MSF intervened to map out contaminated water sources and start implementing solutions.
The consequences of the climate crisis are clearly more severe for people who live in climate-vulnerable settings. And for some communities, even the recommendation to stay hydrated can be impossible to follow because of the lack of a safe, clean drinking water. A flood in a city can cause damage; even worse, a flood in an area with a precarious sewage system can spread diseases like cholera and diarrhea, as happened in Haiti.
“It is important to understand many of these impacts are cumulative and fall on communities that generally have limited resources to react effectively,” says Guevara. She explains that MSF is working to adapt our operations to respond more effectively to problems caused by the climate crisis. “We need earlier detection systems that take into account not only weather patterns but also epidemiological ones, to better understand this interrelation and react more quickly and effectively.”
From commitments to action
COP30 needs countries to present more ambitious climate goals. So far, failure to deliver on commitments to curb emissions has resulted in continued global heating. If climate change accelerates unabated, the living conditions for some people in the world will become increasingly unacceptable.
At the same time, action is urgently needed. “The most affected countries and communities are not receiving the support they need, which is concrete financial and technical support that can translate into real improvements in people’s health and health systems on the ground,” says Guevara.
MSF advocates for integrating a stronger health and humanitarian perspective into the conference agenda. We call for mobilizing concrete action to safeguard the health of the most at-risk communities, especially those who are already-made vulnerable by factors like conflict and poverty. Another important point is to ensure broad access to climate adaptation strategies, so as not to perpetuate mechanisms that increase inequalities and privilege high-income countries. This is especially challenging considering that funding for adaptation is clearly insufficient to cover the needs, increasing the inequality gap.
Despite the challenging scenario, a promising aspect for the Belém conference is the stronger role expected for local and Indigenous communities in framing and enacting solutions. This is renewing hope that long-delayed implementation may finally move forward where it matters most.
“Our experience shows that a top-down approach would not only be inefficient, but in fact it would be unwise not to apply the knowledge of traditional communities to help us tackle such a complex challenge as the climate emergency,” says Renata Reis, MSF executive director in Brazil. She hopes the prominent role grassroots movements are expected to play at this edition of COP could make a positive difference. “If our efforts overlook local and indigenous knowledge, we risk ignoring real needs and deepening existing inequalities,” she says.
