Insights from Natio­nal Poli­cy Stake­hol­ders

Sophie Gepp¹, Rem­co van de Pas², Mai­ke Voss², Doro­thea Baltruks¹, Gre­ta Sie­vert¹, Julia­ne Mirow³

^{1 Cent­re for Pla­ne­ta­ry Health Poli­cy
2 Cent­re for Pla­ne­ta­ry Health Poli­cy (form­er­ly affi­lia­ted)
3 Ger­man Alli­ance on Cli­ma­te Chan­ge and Health (KLUG e.V.)}

Abs­tract

To exami­ne the cur­rent sta­tus and poten­ti­al for fur­ther inte­gra­ti­on of cli­ma­te and health poli­ci­es in Ger­ma­ny, we con­duc­ted and ana­ly­zed inter­views with stake­hol­ders working on cli­ma­te chan­ge, health, and rela­ted are­as from various sec­tors inclu­ding govern­ment, health­ca­re, aca­de­mia, and advo­ca­cy orga­niza­ti­ons.

We found gene­ral agree­ment among par­ti­ci­pan­ts that cli­ma­te and health poli­ci­es should be more clo­se­ly inte­gra­ted, though health stake­hol­ders empha­si­zed this need more urgen­tly com­pared to cli­ma­te actors. Most par­ti­ci­pan­ts saw poten­ti­al bene­fits in fur­ther inte­gra­ti­on, inclu­ding maxi­mi­zing co-bene­fits for cli­ma­te action and public health out­co­mes, and poten­ti­al­ly incre­asing public sup­port for cli­ma­te poli­ci­es through a health lens.

Among the iden­ti­fied bar­riers to fur­ther inte­gra­ti­on were: limi­t­ed finan­cial and human resour­ces; chal­lenges in inter­sec­to­ral col­la­bo­ra­ti­on; com­plex gover­nan­ce struc­tures; lack of per­cei­ved urgen­cy and atten­ti­on; short-term elec­to­ral cycles; weak sci­ence-to-poli­cy inter­face; and insuf­fi­ci­ent focus on pre­ven­ti­on. Oppor­tu­ni­ties for advance­ment included: inte­gra­ting cli­ma­te con­side­ra­ti­ons into health sec­tor reforms and vice ver­sa, poli­ti­cal elec­tions and glo­bal chal­lenges as win­dows of oppor­tu­ni­ty and lever­aging co-bene­fits of cli­ma­te action for health.

Stra­te­gies recom­men­ded to impro­ve inte­gra­ti­on com­pri­sed: enhan­cing joint working across minis­tries and sec­tors; redi­rec­ting harmful sub­si­dies; streng­thening the evi­dence-to-poli­cy nexus; imple­men­ting bin­ding legis­la­ti­ve requi­re­ments; impro­ving com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on stra­te­gies; and focu­sing on soci­al­ly equi­ta­ble cli­ma­te poli­ci­es. We explo­re poten­ti­al impli­ca­ti­ons for natio­nal poli­cy-makers, actors in the health sec­tor, rese­ar­chers, fun­ders, and advo­ca­cy orga­niza­ti­ons to sys­te­ma­ti­cal­ly inte­gra­te cli­ma­te and health con­side­ra­ti­ons into Germany’s poli­cy agen­da.

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