3rd October 2024
Dear David Lammy,
We congratulate you on your important and historic speech delivered at Kew Gardens and offer the support of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC) in delivering on the climate and nature crisis.
You were right to observe that the climate and nature crisis “defines our time,” and we are pleased that you have promised that “action on the climate and nature crisis will be central to all that the Foreign Office does.” You are also right that “biodiversity loss is as much of a threat as changes to our climate” and that “climate change is now the biggest threat to human health.”
UKHACC is an alliance of 48 organisations comprising most of the royal colleges (physicians, nursing, GPs, etc), the BMA, the Lancet, and the BMJ. Our members’ members number over a million, most of the NHS workforce.
We work internationally as well as nationally and are founder members of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. We coordinated three editorials on climate change and health that were published in 300 health journals from around the world before the last three COPs. Two emphasised how we can hope to keep the global temperature to below an increase of 1.5C on climate change only if high income countries give financial and technical support to vulnerable low and middle income countries. The third argued that the climate and nature crisis should be treated as one crisis.
Before the election we published a manifesto that had five asks, the third of which was:
Meet international commitments
- The UK to meet existing financial commitments
- Develop innovative ways to increase financial investments to support climate and ecological action through public/private sector partnerships
There are two outcomes that we would like to see from COP29: a detailed plan with targets for transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables; and high income countries meeting and increasing their financial and technical support to vulnerable low and middle income countries.
We recognise that it won’t be easy to achieve either of these aims, not least because of the severe pressures on the public purse, but we support your efforts to achieve these aims.
Please let us know if there are specific ways in which we can help.
Best wishes
Dr Richard Smith CBE, FMedSci
Chair, UK Health Alliance on Climate Change