Daily Article Gist/The Hindu/22 Sep 2025

Context

• Global Event: July 2025, Brazil hosted the Global Conference on Climate and Health.
• Outcome: 90 nations drafted the Belém Health Action Plan to be launched at COP30, setting the global climate-health agenda.
• India’s Position: No official representation—missed opportunity to showcase its developmental approach as a model for climate-health integration.

Lessons from India’s Welfare Schemes for Climate-Health Action

India demonstrates how policies not explicitly climate-focused can deliver significant health and environmental co-benefits. Key insights: integration, leadership, and community engagement.

1. Nutrition and Climate-Resilient Food Systems

• PM POSHAN Scheme:
  • Covers 11 crore children in 11 lakh schools.
  • Links health, education, agriculture, and food procurement.
  • Promotes millets and traditional grains → reduces malnutrition and builds climate-resilient food systems.

2. Sanitation, Livelihoods, and Clean Energy

• Swachh Bharat Abhiyan:
• Improved sanitation, public health, and dignity.
• Enhanced sustainability and hygiene practices.
• Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA):
• Restored degraded ecosystems through rural works.
• PM Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY):
• Promoted clean cooking fuel, reducing household air pollution and emissions.

Critical Insights for Climate-Health Integration:

Political Leadership:

• Prime Ministerial support ensured inter-ministerial cooperation (e.g., Swachh Bharat, PMUY).
• Framing climate change as a health emergency can mobilise similar momentum.

Community Engagement:

• Cultural symbols and grassroots participation ensured success.
• Climate action needs cultural anchoring in societal values of health and prosperity.

Institutional Strengthening:

• Leveraging existing networks like ASHA workers, SHGs, municipal bodies, panchayats enhances credibility and sustainability.

Challenges in Intersectoral Climate-Health Policies

Administrative and Structural Constraints:

• Siloed departmental responsibilities hinder integrated implementation.
• Example: High LPG refill costs under PMUY persist due to oil marketing interests.

Social and Cultural Barriers:

• Limit equitable access without sustained support mechanisms.

Three Pillars for Health-Anchored Climate Governance:

Strategic Prioritisation:

• Link climate action to immediate health benefits (e.g., PMUY linked clean cooking to women’s empowerment).

Procedural Integration:

• Mandatory health impact assessments across energy, agriculture, transport, urban planning.
• Comparable to environmental clearance processes.

Participatory Implementation:

• Communities respond better to direct health gains (clean air, safe water) than abstract carbon metrics.
• Local health workers can act as advocates connecting environmental changes to everyday health outcomes.

India’s Path to Integrated Climate-Health Action:

Current Choice:

• Continue tackling climate and health separately → limited results.
• OR adopt intersectoral model treating climate and health as interconnected.

Strategy:

• Build on welfare policy experience.
• Engage globally and showcase governance models for coordinated, transformative solutions.

Conclusion:

• India must embrace an integrated climate-health model.
• Leverage welfare experiences, leadership, and community action.
• Cost of inaction: immense;
• Potential benefits: coordinated, transformative global impact.

Article Based Mains Questions : UPSC/PCS/250/200 words

“Discuss how India’s welfare schemes provide lessons for integrating climate and health objectives. Examine the challenges in intersectoral governance and suggest measures for a health-anchored climate action framework in India