A climate-health vision with lessons from India

On July 29-31, 2025, Brazil hosted the 2025 World Convention on Local weather and Well being, with delegates from 90 international locations shaping the Belém Well being Motion Plan. Set to be launched at COP30 to be held in November 2025,this plan will outline the worldwide agenda on local weather and well being. India was not formally represented — a major missed alternative to emerge as a worldwide exemplar, given its developmental strategy provides classes for implementing the Belém Plan.

Insights from India’s welfare programmes

For international locations within the World South in search of synergistic insurance policies that advance a number of developmental targets, India’s intersectoral welfare programmes provide invaluable insights. Contemplate the Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN), India’s flagship diet scheme masking over 11 crore youngsters throughout almost 11 lakh faculties. Its accomplishment lies in additionally connecting the dots between well being, schooling, agriculture and meals procurement methods. By selling millets and conventional grains, it addresses malnutrition and in addition builds climate-resilient meals methods.

Equally, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has tackled sanitation, public well being, human dignity and environmental sustainability, whereas MNREGA’s environmental works have improved rural livelihoods whereas restoring degraded ecosystems. And with Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), the swap to wash cooking gasoline has diminished family air air pollution, a significant reason for respiratory sickness, whereas chopping carbon emissions.

None of those initiatives was designed explicitly as “local weather insurance policies”, but they’ve had important well being and local weather co-benefits. These insurance policies reveal a essential perception: non-health interventions can generate substantial well being co-benefits whereas addressing local weather challenges. Every intervention has additionally proved that intentional, intersectoral motion can multiply influence. India’s expertise has takeaways for operationalising an built-in climate-health imaginative and prescient. First, sturdy political management makes a distinction. PMUY and Swachh Bharat gained advantages from direct Prime Ministerial involvement, guaranteeing cooperation throughout Ministries. When political leaders body local weather motion as a well being emergency slightly than simply an environmental situation, it instructions consideration throughout authorities departments and receives wider public help.

Second, neighborhood engagement is a crucial ingredient. Swachh Bharat leveraged cultural symbolism, invoking Mahatma Gandhi’s imaginative and prescient of cleanliness. PM POSHAN constructed grass-root help by parent-teacher associations and faculty committees. Equally, local weather motion wants cultural anchoring, linking environmental safety to societal values of well being and prosperity.

Third, previous insurance policies succeeded by constructing on present establishments slightly than creating parallel buildings. Local weather motion should be embedded in present social and institutional frameworks. Accredited Social Well being Activists, self-help group members, municipal our bodies and panchayat representatives can develop into highly effective advocates, particularly after they internalise the interlinks between environmental modifications and neighborhood well-being.

Some challenges

Nonetheless, expertise additionally reveals elementary constraints in implementing intersectoral coverage by siloed administrative machineries. As insurance policies progress from offering proximal outputs to delivering related outcomes, divergent tasks and institutional mandates of varied sectors start to reassert themselves. As an example, excessive LPG refill prices below PMUY persist, partly because of oil advertising and marketing enterprise pursuits outweighing beneficiary wants. Additional, social and cultural limitations will proceed to hinder utilisation and equitable entry within the absence of sustained reinforcing mechanisms. These challenges present that local weather options should additionally deal with structural inequities by institutionalised mechanisms that measure outcomes, not simply outputs. India’s expertise factors towards a framework for institutionalised, health-anchored local weather governance, constructed on three pillars.

The primary is strategic prioritisation by political leaders by framing local weather insurance policies when it comes to quick well being slightly than summary future dangers. Simply as PMUY succeeded by positioning clear cooking as ladies’s empowerment, local weather motion wants an identical high-level framing that connects environmental insurance policies to well being outcomes that individuals expertise instantly.

The second is procedural integration throughout authorities departments by embedding well being influence assessments into all climate-relevant insurance policies. Simply as environmental clearances are actually customary for main tasks, well being concerns must be obligatory for insurance policies affecting power, transport, agriculture and concrete planning.

Third, participatory implementation that leverages well being as a mobilising power. Communities perceive the well being advantages of cleaner air, safer water and nutritious meals extra intuitively than carbon accounting. Native well being employees can develop into local weather advocates after they see direct connections between environmental modifications and well being outcomes of their apply.

A transparent selection

The selection is evident. India can proceed preventing local weather change and well being challenges individually, with restricted success and mounting prices. Or, it could leverage the institutional knowledge embedded in its welfare insurance policies and deepen its worldwide engagement to create a brand new mannequin of governance that treats these challenges as interconnected issues requiring coordinated options. The stakes are excessive, the prices of inaction devastating, and the potential for transformative influence immense. India and the world can’t afford something lower than a daring, intersectoral, whole-of-society strategy.

Neethi V. Rao is Fellow, Centre for Social and Financial Progress (CSEP). Priyanka Tomar is Analysis Affiliate, Centre for Social and Financial Progress. The views expressed are private

Revealed – September 20, 2025 12:08 am IST