TV One News talks to OraTaiao co-convenor Dr Rhys Jones (and others) at the historic People's Climate March in Auckland.

Watch here.

TPP must not block the path to healthy climate action. Drs Alex Macmillan and Rhys Jones. New Zealand Herald, 27 Nov 2015

The path towards a healthy climate will be a rocky one in the coming year. December's global negotiations in Paris are a crucial crossroads for choosing between bold new routes to health through well-designed climate action or continuing to threaten human survival and wellbeing. Meanwhile, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is about to add another giant obstacle to progress.

More here.

Health professionals will be among thousands of New Zealanders out on the streets this weekend calling for solutions to climate change. The NZ-wide marches are part of thousands of People’s Climate events around the world – ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit starting this Monday in Paris.

“Taking action on climate change could be the greatest health opportunity of the 21st century, and it’s our professional responsibility to ensure we don’t miss this opportunity,” says Dr Rhys Jones, co-convenor of OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate and Health Council.

OraTaiao is coordinating groups of health people & friends/families to walk together in ten of 34 People's Climate Marches around NZ this weekend.

Our NZ marches will be the first of more than 2000 world-wide before the UN Climate Summit in Paris starts this Monday.

​This is the time to gather your family, friends, colleagues, organisations...and make history in the biggest climate marches ever. Wear white and dress up with white coats and stethoscopes if you like. 

Share your photos and comments on social media – tag in @OraTaiao so we can retweet, share on Facebook – and share with [email protected] so we can celebrate healthy climate action around NZ.

Photos from 28th Nov: Auckland, Hastings, Wellington, Christchurch, Rotorua

Professor Sir Ian Gilmore Quote, Nov 2015 (physician and immediate past president of the UK Royal College of Physicians)

“Doctors [and all other health professionals] need look no further than the clear evidence that what is good for the climate is also good for their patients’ health to give them a clear mandate for speaking out.  We remain respected and trusted within our communities and have a responsibility to make clear to them the urgency and enormity of the challenge to mitigate the impact of climate change.  What better way to do this than by marching".

Editorial in the NZ Medical Journal by Dr Scott Metcalfe on behalf of OraTaiao and the NZ College of Public Health Medicine.  Read here.

Health groups have come out today in an editorial (freely available online) in the New Zealand Medical Journal, highlighting serious health disparities as a result of climate change. They state that urgent action, based on a fair approach to reducing global climate emissions, is essential for health and equity.

The editorial was written by Dr Scott Metcalfe, for the New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine and OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate and Health Council.

Interview with Co-convenor Dr Rhys Jones about the climate change legal case brought by Sarah Thomson. Listen here.

Health professionals are welcoming a Waikato law student’s legal challenge of the NZ Government’s weak target for reducing climate emissions.

Sarah Thomson is suing the Government, claiming NZ’s greenhouse gas emissions targets were arrived at illegally, and that the pledge NZ will take to the upcoming international negotiations in Paris is “unreasonable and irrational”.

Earlier this year many health professionals and organisations – representing doctors, nurses, and public health professionals – submitted on NZ’s post-2020 climate target. Their submissions called for ambitious targets that would protect and promote the health of New Zealanders. They included the NZ Medical Association and the NZ Nurses Organisation, representing over 50,000 professionals.

But the consultation process made it clear that the health gains from climate action and the human health costs of inaction were being ignored. The emissions reduction target eventually submitted by New Zealand – an 11 percent reduction on 1990 levels by 2030 – has been widely condemned as grossly inadequate.

“New Zealand’s target is much lower than what scientists say is needed from countries to avoid dangerous levels of climate change that will be catastrophic to human health,” says Dr Rhys Jones, co-convenor of OraTaiao: The NZ Climate and Health Council. “Yet well-planned action to reduce climate-damaging emissions could immediately improve our health and wellbeing.”

Dr Alison Blaiklock's contribution to the Health and Human Rights Journal COP21 series. Read here.

OraTaiao is excited to be a partner organisation in the upcoming 2015 Peoples Climate March NZ, 28 November. This is a chance for New Zealanders from all walks of life - including health - to tell Governments and climate negotiators that commitment to urgent, healthy, and fair climate action is what we must see at Paris.  These may be the largest global marches in history!

www.peoplesclimatemarch.org.nz/

Blog contribution to this international journal series by Gay Keating from OraTaiao - about climate change, health and human rights. 

http://www.hhrjournal.org/2015/10/22/cop21-series-tackling-climate-change-is-great-for-global-health/

Dr Gay Keating's contribution to the Health and Human Rights Journal COP21 series.  Read here.

Eighteen of NZ’s most prestigious health professional organisations are today calling for action on climate change and health, pressing for New Zealand to take urgent action on this critical health issue.

These health groups represent tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, midwives, public health workers, and medical students as well as leading Universities. They are calling on the NZ government, the health sector, and all levels of society to make an urgent transition to a low-emissions NZ, in a way that boosts health and creates a fairer society. Full text with signatories - as of April 2018. Media release.

The release of the NZ ‘Call for Action’ coincides with a global day of action by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and the issuing of a their global Consensus Statement ‘Act now to reduce the damaging health impacts of climate change’  aimed at the UN global climate negotiations in Paris in December.

The Health Organisations that have signed the NZ 'Call for Action' include:

• OraTaiao: The NZ Climate and Health Council
• The Royal Australasian College of Physicians
• The New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA)
• NZ Nurses Organisation
• Health Promotion Forum of NZ
• Australasian College for Emergency Medicine
• NZ College of Public Health Medicine
• NZ College of Midwives
• Public Health Association of NZ
• Colleges of Nurses Aotearoa NZ
• New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists
• The University of Auckland Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences
• The University of Otago Division of Health Sciences
• Auckland University Medical Students Association
• Medical Students for Global Awareness
• NZ Medical Students Association

Also, sign the World Health Organization 'Call for urgent action to protect health from climate change'

See Global Climate and Health Alliance 'Our Climate Our Health' campaign here and RACP DoctorsforClimateAction.

A global climate-health campaign ‘Our Climate Our Health’ launched this week aims to put health at the heart of climate negotiations and policy.

The Global Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA) campaign aims to raise awareness of the ways that climate change impacts on health, and the health benefits of climate action.

‘Our Climate Our Health’ joins the building health voice calling for health to be central to climate negotiations and policy, along with ‘Doctorsforclimateaction’, the World Health Organization, and NZ Health Professionals.

Sixteen of NZ’s most prestigious health professional organisations are today calling for New Zealand to take urgent action on climate change and health, a critical health issue.

These health groups represent tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, midwives, public health workers, and medical students, as well as all the medical and health sciences staff and students at Auckland and Otago Universities.

The 16 groups are calling on the NZ government, the health sector, and all levels of society to make an urgent transition to a low-emissions NZ, in ways that boost health and create a fairer society.

Today the World Health Organization is calling for health professionals around the world to push for a strong effective climate agreement at the UN Climate Conference in Paris this December. In the WHO’s words, “health professionals have a duty of care to current and future generations”.

Dr Alex Macmillan, co-convenor of OraTaiao, NZ’s Climate and Health Council, says that the WHO claims the Paris Climate Conference can create “the most important health agreement of the century”.

“The WHO states clearly that this is an opportunity to not only address the climate crisis and its health consequences, but to also create large, immediate health gains, reducing costs to health systems and communities”, explains Dr Macmillan.

More details on the WHO’s call can be found at its webpage dedicated to its global change campaign at http://www.who.int/globalchange/global-campaign/en/

Letter by NZ surgeons John McCall, Russell Tregonning and Mark Smith. Cutting Edge, Issue 56, September 2015. Read full letter here.

“New Zealand is missing out on too many health opportunities by leaving real climate planning to just a couple of political parties” says Dr Alex Macmillan, co-convenor of OraTaiao: The New Zealand Climate and Health Council.

Today the Green Party has launched ‘Yes we can! A plan for significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions’, which demonstrates how New Zealand could achieve a 40% reduction in climate pollution by 2030 in an affordable way.  The Council would like to see strong climate leadership shared by all political parties.

“As world-leading medical journal The Lancet recently reported, a business-as-usual approach to climate change will undo the important health and life expectancy gains of the last half century.  The Lancet also described tackling climate change as potentially the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century” says Dr Macmillan.

In a world first, the Dutch court has ordered the state to reduce its climate-changing emissions by 25% (on 1990 levels) in the next five years, to protect its people from climate change.

The law suit was brought to the courts by the Urgenda Foundation, backed by 900 citizens.

The court ruled that because of the great risks posed by climate change, the State has a ‘duty of care’ to take stronger action to reduce climate change (mitigation). 

This ruling comes in the same week as a leading international medical journal The Lancet has reconfirmed climate change as the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.