Catalysing South Africa’s G20 Climate-Health Leadership and Aligning with Brazil’s COP30 Agenda

This proposal seeks supplemental funding to strengthen South Africa’s leadership in climate-health diplomacy during its 2025 G20 presidency, aligning efforts with Brazil’s COP30 agenda. Led by Wits Planetary Health Research and ImpactNexus, the initiative builds on an initial work package supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and aims to close critical gaps in policy development and implementation, technical support, and multilateral coordination. The core objective is to operationalise South Africa’s G20 climate-health vision through three interlinked workstreams: (1) strategic and logistical readiness for the June 2025 G20 Health Working Group side event, a flagship convening on extreme weather events and other climate hazards and their impact on health systems(2) development of policy and fiscal tools to integrate health into climate frameworks; and (3) authorship of a G20 White Paper and Ministerial Declaration to embed climate-health within global economic and environmental governance frameworks(G20 and UNFCCC Conference of the Parties). This Africa-led initiative leverages a rare geopolitical opportunity to synchronise G20 and UNFCCC processes, elevate climate-health on the global agenda, and deliver resilient, equity-oriented health systems. It is closely aligned with Wellcome’s priorities to accelerate science-policy translation, especially in underrepresented regions, and to scale data-driven, integrated public health approaches to the climate crisis.