COP31 opens in Antalya with Health Day as WHO launches climate-health initiative

Story So Far

The United Nations climate summit COP31 opened in Antalya on Monday with a dedicated Health Day, as the World Health Organization launched a new initiative to make health systems resilient to climate change.

The summit runs from 9 to 20 November at the Antalya Expo Center, with nearly 200 countries taking part and Türkiye holding the presidency. The first day is themed around food, agriculture and health, with four high-level panels and a ministerial roundtable on resilient health systems. The Antalya Initiative for Health Resilience, launched on Monday, is a voluntary, non-binding initiative to turn climate-health evidence into policy. The WHO says about 3.5 billion people live in contexts highly vulnerable to climate change, and that more than 90 percent of deaths from climate-related disasters in the past two decades were in developing countries.

WHO analysis published on 4 November found that just six priority climate-health actions could save 1.6 million lives a year and return $24 for every dollar invested. The organisation will host more than 60 events at the COP31 Health Pavilion across all 12 thematic days of the summit. The World Leaders' Summit follows on 11 and 12 November.

The summit dates, the Health Day programme and the launch of the Antalya initiative come from the WHO's own announcement, the primary source, and the UN climate body. The casualty and cost-benefit figures are the WHO's own analysis, published on 4 November. The Amnesty International warning published before the summit, covered in an earlier file, was a pre-summit statement, not part of the opening itself.

The test for the health agenda is whether it survives into the negotiated outcome at the end of the two weeks, rather than staying a side event. The first moment that will show its standing is the World Leaders' Summit on 11 and 12 November, when heads of government set the tone for the negotiations that run to 20 November.