On July 29-31, 2025, Brazil hosted the 2025 International Convention on Local weather and Well being, with delegates from 90 international locations shaping the Belém Well being Motion Plan. Set to be launched at COP30 to be held in November 2025,this plan will outline the worldwide agenda on local weather and well being. India was not formally represented — a big missed alternative to emerge as a worldwide exemplar, given its developmental method provides classes for implementing the Belém Plan.
Insights from India’s welfare programmes
For international locations within the International South searching for synergistic insurance policies that advance a number of developmental targets, India’s intersectoral welfare programmes provide worthwhile insights. Think about the Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN), India’s flagship diet scheme overlaying over 11 crore kids throughout almost 11 lakh colleges. Its accomplishment lies in additionally connecting the dots between well being, training, agriculture and meals procurement programs. By selling millets and conventional grains, it addresses malnutrition and in addition builds climate-resilient meals programs.
Equally, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has tackled sanitation, public well being, human dignity and environmental sustainability, whereas MNREGA’s environmental works have improved rural livelihoods whereas restoring degraded ecosystems. And with Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), the swap to wash cooking gasoline has decreased family air air pollution, a significant explanation for respiratory sickness, whereas reducing carbon emissions.
None of those initiatives was designed explicitly as “local weather insurance policies”, but they’ve had important well being and local weather co-benefits. These insurance policies display a vital perception: non-health interventions can generate substantial well being co-benefits whereas addressing local weather challenges. Every intervention has additionally proved that intentional, intersectoral motion can multiply affect. India’s expertise has takeaways for operationalising an built-in climate-health imaginative and prescient. First, robust political management makes a distinction. PMUY and Swachh Bharat gained advantages from direct Prime Ministerial involvement, making certain cooperation throughout Ministries. When political leaders body local weather motion as a well being emergency quite than simply an environmental difficulty, it instructions consideration throughout authorities departments and receives wider public assist.
Second, group engagement is a crucial ingredient. Swachh Bharat leveraged cultural symbolism, invoking Mahatma Gandhi’s imaginative and prescient of cleanliness. PM POSHAN constructed grass-root assist via parent-teacher associations and college committees. Equally, local weather motion wants cultural anchoring, linking environmental safety to societal values of well being and prosperity.
Third, previous insurance policies succeeded by constructing on current establishments quite than creating parallel constructions. Local weather motion have to be embedded in current social and institutional frameworks. Accredited Social Well being Activists, self-help group members, municipal our bodies and panchayat representatives can turn out to be highly effective advocates, particularly after they internalise the interlinks between environmental adjustments and group well-being.
Some challenges
Nonetheless, expertise additionally reveals elementary constraints in implementing intersectoral coverage via siloed administrative machineries. As insurance policies progress from offering proximal outputs to delivering related outcomes, divergent obligations and institutional mandates of varied sectors start to reassert themselves. As an example, excessive LPG refill prices below PMUY persist, partly resulting from oil advertising enterprise pursuits outweighing beneficiary wants. Additional, social and cultural boundaries will proceed to hinder utilisation and equitable entry within the absence of sustained reinforcing mechanisms. These challenges present that local weather options should additionally tackle structural inequities via institutionalised mechanisms that measure outcomes, not simply outputs. India’s expertise factors towards a framework for institutionalised, health-anchored local weather governance, constructed on three pillars.
The primary is strategic prioritisation by political leaders via framing local weather insurance policies when it comes to instant well being quite than summary future dangers. Simply as PMUY succeeded by positioning clear cooking as girls’s empowerment, local weather motion wants an identical high-level framing that connects environmental insurance policies to well being outcomes that individuals expertise immediately.
The second is procedural integration throughout authorities departments by embedding well being affect assessments into all climate-relevant insurance policies. Simply as environmental clearances at the moment are commonplace for main initiatives, well being concerns needs to be necessary for insurance policies affecting power, transport, agriculture and concrete planning.
Third, participatory implementation that leverages well being as a mobilising pressure. Communities perceive the well being advantages of cleaner air, safer water and nutritious meals extra intuitively than carbon accounting. Native well being staff can turn out to be local weather advocates after they see direct connections between environmental adjustments and well being outcomes of their follow.
A transparent alternative
The selection is obvious. India can proceed combating local weather change and well being challenges individually, with restricted success and mounting prices. Or, it may possibly leverage the institutional knowledge embedded in its welfare insurance policies and deepen its worldwide engagement to create a brand new mannequin of governance that treats these challenges as interconnected issues requiring coordinated options. The stakes are excessive, the prices of inaction devastating, and the potential for transformative affect immense. India and the world can not afford something lower than a daring, intersectoral, whole-of-society method.
Neethi V. Rao is Fellow, Centre for Social and Financial Progress (CSEP). Priyanka Tomar is Analysis Affiliate, Centre for Social and Financial Progress. The views expressed are private
Printed – September 20, 2025 12:08 am IST
