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