About CAPCHA
Transforming Climate & Health Action Across Africa
Climate change is a global crisis with far-reaching implications for public health, and Africa stands out as a region particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of extreme weather events linked to climate variability.
Protecting African Communities
from Climate Health Impacts
This heightened susceptibility is exacerbated by an already strained healthcare system and the absence of robust early warning systems, factors partly attributed to the region's fragile socio-economic conditions. Besides, many African countries have failed to effectively adapt to climate change impacts due to lack of context-specific data to inform action.
CAPCHA Concept Note
Download our comprehensive concept note document
Background
Understanding the critical need for climate and health action in Africa
While research evidence has been identified to be key in furthering sustainable development in policy documents like the 2030 United Nations Agenda and the 2063 African Union Agenda, data generated from the Global North may fail to effectively foster the much-needed transformative change in Africa. Though the data may help inform researchers, policymakers, and communities on how to address C & H issues, they may not be context-relevant, and thus the need to support and augment the capacity of African researchers to enable them to produce context-specific data for action.
From the policy perspective, African countries appear to have national climate change policy and national adaptation plan documents that merely alludes to C & H in barely a paragraph. Regional adaptation plans for different countries, therefore, have to be co-developed to facilitate policy interventions. Moreover, limited funding and inadequate capacity of C & H actors is also another impediment to the advancement of the climate and health agenda in Africa.
The noticeable absence of climate change and health courses or fellowships offered within the various African regions further makes it difficult for interested stakeholders to access such courses and enhance their capacity. This inadequacy acts as an obstacle to the effective design and implementation of research and adaptation programs. Compounding the matter is the fact that climate change and health research are often compartmentalized across various disciplines, resulting in a fragmented landscape of specialized discussions. This compartmentalization hinders efforts to synthesize key findings aimed at identifying trends and gaps in the evidence. Advancing the climate and health agenda in Africa will, therefore, depend on how well the linkages between research, policy, and capacity are strengthened in addition to tackling existing inequalities in research.
Urgent action is imperative if economies are to be decarbonized and more resilient health systems developed. This can be accomplished by providing contextualized evidence to support action, leading in climate advocacy and leadership, guiding sectors that significantly affect health through their actions, and assuming responsibility for climate resilience and the imperative to decarbonize healthcare systems. Transdisciplinary research and action agenda on climate change and health can help inform evidence given the human-environmental system problems being currently experienced by society. Considering the importance of collaboration in advancing the C & H agenda, key role players have to be identified and the process has to be intentional to guarantee that regional adaptation plans can be developed for different countries.
Why A Climate & Health Platform?
The transformation needed to address the health impacts of climate change in Africa will demand innovative approaches of mobilizing resources, working jointly, and applying knowledge. To efficiently address the diverse C & H challenges as well as the varied needs and interests of actors in the different sectors, research must be effectively interlinked with policymaking, planning, and action. The co-generation of data across disciplines is one approach that can foster such transformations. By providing timely and policy-relevant research, researchers can support evidence-based decision-making and effective implementation of climate and health policies.
Collaboration
Bringing together researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners from various disciplines
Evidence-Based Action
Supporting evidence-based decision-making and effective policy implementation
Knowledge Exchange
Facilitating sharing of best practices and collaborative research development
Context-Specific Solutions
Generating African-led research for context-relevant climate and health action
Our Approach
This can be achieved by creating platforms such as CAPCHA that brings together researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners from various disciplines and sectors. The platform will facilitate knowledge exchange, sharing of best practices, and collaboration on research and policy development. The platform will also be used to encourage regular communication channels such as meetings, conferences, and webinars to help foster dialogue and information sharing between different stakeholders. This will ensure that C & H stakeholders are up-to-date with the latest research, policy updates, and field experiences. Information on the connection between climate and health will equally be provided on the platform as most people view them separately. This can be done by sharing evidence of how climate change can affect the health sector, and similarly how the health sector can get prepared and minimize the negative effects of climate change.
Join the Climate Action Movement
Urgent action is imperative if economies are to be decarbonized and more resilient health systems developed. This can be accomplished by providing contextualized evidence to support action, leading in climate advocacy and leadership, guiding sectors that significantly affect health through their actions, and assuming responsibility for climate resilience and the imperative to decarbonize healthcare systems.
