By Sharon Atieno
Nairobi. For a long time, health has been treated as a secondary consequence of climate change, mentioned only in passing within agriculture, water, or adaptation discussions rather than as a standalone issue. However, tremendous progress has been made to reverse the situation.
Friday Phiri, Climate Change Advocacy Lead at Amref Health Africa, said during a climate change and health cafe organised by the Media for Environment, Science, Health and Agriculture (MESHA).
Phiri highlighted that within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), health targets have now been included in the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) framework.
At the continental level, starting from 2024, the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) decisions have been explicitly referencing climate and health as a key issue in their declarations. This means African environment ministers can no longer discuss environmental issues without also addressing health.
“The outcomes from the Africa Climate Summits, including the one held in Nairobi in 2023 and the one in Ethiopia, have also started incorporating climate and health as a central theme,” he added.
To improve articulation of health and climate change issues, AMREF developed and launched a climate and health negotiators curriculum. “The curriculum equips African negotiators with the knowledge needed to properly argue for health in negotiating rooms, since previously they lacked the expertise to put health firmly on the table,” Phiri noted.
At the 2026 Subsidiary Body meetings in Bonn, Germany, the African Common Position on Climate and Health was revised and adopted, along with a roadmap covering 2026 to 2027 to strengthen Africa’s climate and health positioning ahead of climate change conference of Parties (COP) in Turkey and COP32 in Ethiopia.
The African Common Position focuses on framing climate change as a public health emergency. It demands scaled-up climate finance for health systems, operationalized loss-and-damage funds, and a multi-sectoral “One Health” approach to combat rising vector-borne diseases and food insecurity
He also mentioned that the Pan-African Partnership on Climate and Health is a key collaboration platform, emphasizing that working in partnerships rather than isolation is essential to advancing the agenda.
Phiri underscored the media’s role as a critical partner in advancing the climate and health agenda, urging journalists to move beyond event-driven reporting and venture into clinics, farms, markets and communities to document how climate change is affecting health and livelihoods.
He urged journalists to humanize climate change through community-focused stories, investigate whether climate finance is reaching vulnerable populations, track government commitments, counter misinformation and amplify African expertise and the voices of communities on the front lines of climate change.
Similarly, Lynet Otieno, Mongabay editor, encouraged journalists, both upcoming and existing, to think more broadly and interconnect issues rather than reporting in silos.
“When covering a story, do not just focus on one angle but look at how different issues intersect. Use the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a framework to identify these connections,” Otieno said, adding that a climate change story should go beyond the disaster such as floods, and look at other aspects of that disaster such as health and financial implications to the victims.
Additionally, journalists were told to localize global stories. With COP31 coming up in Turkey, she urged journalists to connect the global climate discussions, especially around health and finance, back to their specific country context, since each country has unique economic and policy circumstances.
Reiterating the media’s role in holding governments accountable, Otieno noted that journalists should also base their coverage of climate change on long-term country visions and the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to identify which targets have been met.
The science media café brought together journalists and health and climate experts to examine the growing impact of climate change on community health. Participants explored emerging climate-related health risks and gained practical insights into evidence-based reporting on the intersection between climate change and health.
This story first appeared in Sayansi Magazine ©MESHA Features