The Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate Change and Health (ATACH)
The Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate Change and Health (ATACH) strives to realize the climate change and health ambition set at COP26 using the collective power of countries, partners and other stakeholders to drive this agenda forward at pace and scale; and promote the integration of climate change and health nexus into respective national, regional, and global plans.
Our work builds on the commitments made by 50 Ministries of Health at COP26, where they pledged to develop climate-resilient and low-carbon sustainable health systems. The ATACH is the continuation of this initiative aiming to turn these commitments into action.
Our objective is to support countries in making and delivering on these ambitious commitments for climate resilience and health sector decarbonization. We achieve this through a range of activities, including advocacy, technical support, knowledge sharing, monitoring, and access to financing.
Join us in our mission to promote a healthier and sustainable future for all.
Key facts
Key objectives
- Advocate for and enable concrete, ambitious commitments and priorities on climate change and health in the health sector and health-determining sectors.
- Promote information sharing and partnership building among actors and sectors to facilitate coordination and alignment of CCH efforts.
- Support countries to deliver on climate change and health priorities by facilitating access to required financial and technical support, and by promoting evidence-based best practices, knowledge and innovative solutions.
- Track and measure collective progress towards climate change and health commitments and priorities (with a focus on climate resilient and low carbon sustainable health systems) through standardized approaches.
Functions
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Advocacy & agenda-setting: Influencing shifts in global cross-sectoral climate and health policy through countries’ and CCH actors’ collective power.
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Alignment & coherence: Promoting and facilitating alignment, coherence and collaboration between CCH actors and initiatives, and health-determining sectors.
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Finance: Identifying financing needs, breaking down the barriers, and supporting countries – particularly middle- and low- income countries – to access finance for climate and health interventions.
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Knowledge generation & sharing: Identifying and collectively addressing gaps in knowledge responding to country needs, and creating a platform to share experiences, expertise, and technical assistance.
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Monitoring & tracking: Tracking and measuring the collective impact and progress of the ATACH in supporting implementation of commitments and priorities at country level.
Climate resilient and low carbon health systems:
...are those capable of anticipating, responding to, coping with, recovering from, and adapting to climate-related shocks and stress, while minimizing GHG emissions and other negative environmental impacts to deliver quality care and protect the health and well-being of present and future generations.
The WHO Operational Framework for Climate Resilient and Low Carbon Health Systems (see Figure 1 below) outlines 10 components related to the six building blocks of the health system to systematically build resilience and reduce carbon across the health system.
The COP26 Health commitments are first priority actions for building climate resilient and low carbon sustainable health systems.
Now is the time to turn commitments into actions.
The ATACH aims to support countries in this endeavour by providing a platform for coordination, knowledge, and best practice exchange, networks, access to support and link up to existing initiatives, tackling common challenges, and monitoring global progress. The new ATACH Strategy 2024-2028 outlines new collaboration mechanisms for ATACH members to contribute to delivering on the global climate change agenda. These include task teams and technical meetings.
The activities of ATACH span several topic areas relevant to advancing the COP26 health commitments. Discover more by navigating topic sections below.