Opportunities and Challenges for Financing Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health in the Context of Climate Change
This article provides an overview of the threats climate change represents for women, children and adolescents, including the most vulnerable communities, and where health and climate investments should focus. It draws on evidence to explore the opportunities and challenges for health financing, climate finance and co-financing schemes to enhance equity and protect WCAH while supporting climate goals.Summary:
- Women, children and adolescents (WCA), especially in low-income and middle-income countries, are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change due to systemic gender inequalities and their unique stages in the life course.
- Investing in WCA can address these inequities in climate risk, and generate large health, economic, social and environmental gains in both the short-term and long-term.
- Climate adaptation is currently rarely integrated within women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health (WCAH) programmes, and WCAH and well-being is not mainstreamed in climate policies and financing.
- Initiatives to promote co-financing of WCAH and climate resilience would therefore yield large and sustained returns.
- For climate finance to be effective, it is crucial to increase equity and gender and age responsiveness of climate mitigation and adaptation plans.
- There is also a need for investments in new or adapted health financing mechanisms to support WCA climate-related needs.
Related links:
• PMNCH brief: Prioritizing Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health in the Climate Crisis
Organization: BMJ Global Health
Year: 2024
Language: English
Web link: https://gh.bmj.com/content/9/4/e014596.info
