Global Plastics Treaty Talks Near Collapse With Days to Deadline

11/08/2025 Stefan Anderson

GENEVA — The world’s attempt to forge a plastics treaty billed as the most important environmental deal since the Paris climate accord is falling apart after three years of talks. With negotiations due to end Thursday evening, 184 nations gathered in Geneva remain deadlocked over basic definitions, the scope of the treaty and whether to […] Continue reading ->

Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Swarm ‘Last Chance’ UN Plastics Treaty Talks

08/08/2025 Stefan Anderson

GENEVA — Fossil fuel and petrochemical lobbyists have descended on UN plastics treaty negotiations in record numbers, as delegates from over 180 countries attempt to forge a global agreement to stem the tsunami of plastic pollution drowning the planet. According to a new analysis by the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL), at least 234 […] Continue reading ->

‘Plastics Crisis’ Costs Trillions, Kills Hundreds of Thousands Each Year, Lancet Finds

04/08/2025 Stefan Anderson

Plastics are a “grave, growing and under-recognised danger” to people and the planet, causing “disease and death” from infancy to old age, a landmark review has found. The Lancet Plastics Countdown, published as diplomats from around the world arrived in Geneva on Monday for the overtime round of talks on a global plastics treaty, estimates […] Continue reading ->

Health Organizations Must Cut Ties with Fossil-Fueled Public Relations and Advertising Firms

31/07/2025 Edward Maibach & Jemilah Mahmood

As health actors meet this week in Brasilia to refine a Health Action Plan for COP30, ending relationships with PR firms that engage with fossil fuel producers is one concrete step both civil society and UN actors could take now, two leading global health actors argue. The call is the more urgent in light of […] Continue reading ->

Hunger Declines Globally, but Rises in Africa

28/07/2025 Elaine Ruth Fletcher

The proportion of the world’s population suffering acute hunger declined globally in 2024 to about 673 million people, but continued to rise in most African regions as well as western Asia, according to the new UN State of Food Security and Nutrition (SOFI) report, launched Monday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Global hunger levels have remained […] Continue reading ->

The Accelerating Health Impacts of Heat: UK Climate and Health Summit Highlights Trends Ahead of COP30

28/07/2025 Elaine Ruth Fletcher

LONDON – Summit it was not as there were no heads of state or even Bill Gates, although the UK’s Minister for Climate Change made a compelling presentation showing the kind of policy leadership starkly absent in the United States. Even so, the recent Climate and Health Summit, hosted by the UK Physiological Society, the […] Continue reading ->

States Have a Duty to Prevent Significant Harm from Climate Change, ICJ Rules

23/07/2025 Disha Shetty

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on Wednesday that states have a duty to prevent significant harm to the environment from climate change in a landmark advisory opinion. The court also ruled that the states have a duty to cooperate internationally and called on them to set national climate targets that are of the […] Continue reading ->

Humanity Moves Into ‘Unknown” as Warming Earth Transgresses Planetary Boundaries

17/07/2025 Maayan Hoffman

After 2024 became the warmest year on record, with temperatures rising 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels for the first time ever, humanity is “moving into the unknown,” said Andy Haines, professor of environmental change and public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “We are now above the Paris Agreement’s preferred target […] Continue reading ->

EXCLUSIVE: WHO Chief Names New Team of Directors – Mostly Familiar Faces

01/07/2025 Elaine Ruth Fletcher

World Health Organization Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced his new team of 36 directors at headquarters on Tuesday, according to an internal message to WHO staff, seen by Health Policy Watch. Nine of the appointments, including key positions heading the Departments of Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health, and the newly-combined Department of Environment, […] Continue reading ->

Asia is Warming Twice the Rate of Global Average, WMO Warns

23/06/2025 Disha Shetty

Asia, the world’s most populous continent, is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, according to the latest State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released on Monday. In 2024, Asia’s average temperature was about 1.04°C above the average for 1991 to 2020, ranking as […] Continue reading ->