WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the COP30 Leaders' Summit – 7 November 2025

Your Excellency President Lula,

Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,

WHO thanks Brazil for hosting COP30.

Here in the heart of the Amazon, the lungs of the earth, we are reminded that healthy people depend on a healthy planet.

If our planet were a patient, it would be admitted to intensive care. Its vital signs are alarming.

It is running a high fever, with average global temperatures increasing year after year.

Its lung capacity is compromised, with the destruction of forests that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

And many of the earth's water sources - its lifeblood - are contaminated.

Most concerning of all, its condition is deteriorating.

A sick planet means sick people. The climate crisis is a health crisis - not in the future, but now.

It is already spreading disease, worsening malnutrition, displacing communities, and claiming lives through heat, floods, fires, and pollution.

Health is the strongest argument for climate action.

It's much easier to convince people of the need to protect their own health or that of their children, than to protect glaciers or ecosystems. Both are important. One is a lot closer to home.

We welcome Brazil's leadership through the Belém Health Action Plan and the inclusion of health in the COP30 Activation Agenda.

And we commend the Baku COP Presidencies Continuity Coalition for Climate and Health, which is an important step to institutionalize health as a central part of COP presidencies.

WHO is supporting more than 100 countries to build climate-friendly and climate resilient health systems through the Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health, or ATACH.

But there is still one step to go: making health a formal topic in UN climate negotiations.

It is also worrying that health-specific climate action remains severely underfunded -capturing only 2% of adaptation funding and 0.5% of multilateral climate funding.

So our call today is simple:

Put health at the centre of every climate decision;

Direct climate finance towards protecting lives and livelihoods;

And recognize health as a measure of climate ambition and success.

Because there can be no healthy people on a sick planet.

Obrigado. Thank you.