Equipping Climate Negotiators to Place Health Evidence at the Heart of Climate Negotiations

Climate negotiators will train to use health evidence as a bargaining tool in climate talks, rather than treating it as a secondary concern. This matters because climate negotiations have historically prioritised emissions targets and economic costs, while health impacts—such as heat-related deaths, respiratory disease from air pollution, and the spread of infectious diseases—are often treated as afterthoughts. Negotiators lack the specific skills to translate health data into policy language that resonates in diplomatic settings. The project fills a gap in capability-building: no existing programme systematically trains negotiators to wield health evidence as a core argument. If successful, the pilot could shift how governments frame their climate positions. Instead of health appearing as a footnote in final agreements, it could become a central metric for evaluating policy options—alongside carbon budgets and GDP impacts. The training, delivered through Apolitical’s existing government network, could scale to hundreds of negotiators before COP30. The in-person event at COP30 itself would test whether better-prepared negotiators actually secure stronger health commitments in the final text. The project is applied and policy-focused, not fundamental science; its success will be measured by whether health evidence appears more prominently in future climate agreements.