Rethinking Climate, Health, and Impact Metrics at UNGA 80 and Climate Week NYC

New York City became the epicenter of global climate action last month as the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and Climate Week NYC converged to create what many described as a critical moment for assessing progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. Under the theme "Better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights," UNGA 80 brought world leaders together September 23-29, while Climate Week NYC ran from September 21-28 with the theme "Power On," highlighting the urgency of accelerating climate solutions.

Amid discussions of clean energy transitions and climate finance, a powerful narrative emerged around the intersection of climate change and public health that demands fundamentally rethinking how we measure success and allocate resources. Global leaders, both in industry and among policymakers, are recognizing that there is a tight link between health and climate, and there is an urgent need for innovative solutions to tackle them together. Below are three key themes that will be critical to consider as we move forward.

Infrastructure is Part of a Healthy Environment

What: Leaders are now viewing buildings and infrastructure as not only energy consumers requiring efficiencies, but as critical health infrastructure that can either exacerbate or protect against climate health threats.

Who: An all-women panel of senior leaders in sustainability including Heather Daniels, VP of Environment, Safety, Health and Sustainability at Lockheed Martin; Julia Gisewite, Chief Sustainability Officer at Turner Construction; Suzanne Felder, VP Global Impact and Sustainability at Prologis; and Holly Paeper, President, Trane Commercial HVAC Americas.

How: The business case for such "healthy buildings" requires metrics that capture both energy savings and health outcomes, from reduced respiratory illness due to better air quality to improved resilience during extreme heat events. The Health Buildings initiative at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health provides extensive research, tools, and guidance on improving human health both in, and through, the built environment. There are also real-world examples, such as the NYC Clean Heat program that eliminated crude heating oils in buildings, and programs in Boston that engage medical professionals and home inspectors to reduce childhood asthma .

New ROI Metrics Must Include Health

What: New impact metrics are emerging, as traditional return-on-investment frameworks struggle to capture the full value of climate-health interventions.

Who: This theme came up at Global Citizen Impact Sessions, with former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, as well as sessions with Ursula Von Der Leyen, President of the European Commission; Julius Maada Bio, President of Sierra Leone, Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, President of Suriname, and Ilan Goldfajn, President of the Inter-American Development Bank.

How: Many discussions focused on developing new metrics that account for, first, the health co-benefits of climate action (such as decarbonization efforts that reduce air pollution and respiratory disease). Second, avoided costs, such as the economic losses prevented by proactive adaptation measures. Third, equity multipliers, which are investments that reduce health disparities while building climate resilience, and finally, long-term health security, which includes protection against emerging infectious diseases and climate change related health system disruptions. This requires new ways of quantifying the economic value of preventing climate-related disease outbreaks and measuring ROIs for building climate-resilient health infrastructure that protects communities during extreme weather events. On the local level, sharing data between public health departments, urban planners, and policymakers is one way to ensure that community health helps guide decision making; in the absence of formal data sharing, alternative data sources can be critical in understanding the connections between the environment, climate change, and public health.

Addressing AI Energy Needs is Critical

What: As countries race toward AI supremacy, how do we harness AI's potential for climate-health solutions while ensuring the infrastructure supporting it doesn't exacerbate the very problems we're trying to solve.

Who: Several people spoke to the tensions between using AI to combat climate change while dealing with the increased energy and water demands of the technology, such as Fran Katsoudas, EVP & Chief People, Policy, and Purpose Officer at Cisco, Patrick Muyaya, Minister of Communications from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Vanessa Kerry from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health,  Sasha Rubel, head of AI Policy at AWS, and Josh Parker, head of sustainability at NVIDIA

How: While this is a newer, rapidly developing area, there are ways to try and alleviate the energy burden and air pollution from large AI data centers. Recent research from the Natural Resources Defense Council and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have recommendations for local, regional, and state leaders, including improved energy demand forecasting, incentivizing zero-emission sources, and “reducing operational carbon emissions.”

The consensus is clear: addressing the climate-health crisis requires simultaneous action across multiple fronts. This is an "all-in" moment that demands we move beyond siloed thinking about climate finance, health spending, and social investment. It requires integrated metrics that capture health co-benefits across climate interventions, flexible financing that can respond to both chronic challenges and acute crises, equity-centered evaluation that measures success by who is protected and not just aggregate outcomes, long-term value assessment that accounts for avoided costs and system resilience, and innovative use of AI and data while managing the climate footprint of digital infrastructure. This is not a trivial matter.

As we approach COP30 later this year, the frameworks and metrics we develop for climate-health investments will determine whether we can translate growing recognition of the crisis into effective, equitable action. The events in New York made clear that the health of our communities and of our planet are inseparable and our financial systems and measurement tools must finally reflect that reality.

The week's discussions revealed both encouraging progress and sobering challenges. On one hand, there is unprecedented recognition across sectors that climate and health are inextricably linked. Leaders are increasingly willing to make the business case for integrated solutions and to challenge traditional accounting frameworks that undervalue health co-benefits. On the other hand, the scale and urgency of the crisis continue to outpace our response. Extreme weather events are already putting communities' health and wellbeing at risk. We need new finance mechanisms that can deploy resources quickly and effectively and new measurement systems that can capture the full value of prevention and resilience. And as we try to solve this entanglement, we need to ensure that our race toward AI supremacy doesn't undermine the very climate goals these technologies are meant to advance.