Brazil’s Special Envoy for Health Ethel Maciel is redefining climate diplomacy through the lens of human wellbeing.
As COP30 unfolds in Belém, a new voice is helping reshape how the world thinks about climate action. Ethel Maciel, Brazil’s Special Envoy for Health, is ensuring that global negotiations recognize a truth long understood by scientists but often ignored by policymakers — that climate change is a health emergency.
For the first time, health has been elevated as a formal theme at a UN climate conference. It’s a milestone Maciel has championed since her appointment, underscoring that climate resilience begins with people’s capacity to live, breathe, and thrive in a warming world.
Leadership and Vision
A nurse and epidemiologist by training, Ethel Maciel built her career studying how disease patterns shift with environmental change. Now she’s applying that expertise on the global stage — steering the Belém Health Action Plan, which integrates climate considerations into healthcare systems, infrastructure, and surveillance networks.
“COP30 marks the inclusion of health in the climate agenda,” she said at the summit’s opening session. “The effects of extreme heat, pollution, and natural disasters on people’s health demand coordinated, preventive action — not just response.”
Ethel Maciel, COP30 Special Envoy for Health
Her approach goes beyond adaptation. It reframes investment in healthcare as a form of climate mitigation — one that can strengthen communities, protect workers, and reduce systemic vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic. Through partnerships with ministries, universities, and international agencies, Maciel is crafting a model that links climate finance with frontline health delivery.
Why It Matters
By embedding health into climate diplomacy, Ethel Maciel is bridging a gap between scientific evidence and policy implementation. The Belém Health Action Plan aims to guide countries in developing early-warning systems, resilient hospitals, and cross-sector collaboration between environment and health ministries.
Her work reflects a broader Brazilian vision for COP30: to humanize global climate policy. In Belém — at the mouth of the Amazon River, where rising temperatures and changing rainfall already strain local populations — the connection between ecosystems and wellbeing is not theoretical. It’s lived reality.
“Climate policy must start from the ground up, from the bodies and communities most affected,” Ethel Maciel said. “Health is how we measure success — not only in emissions, but in lives improved and saved.”
As delegates debate emissions targets and finance mechanisms, Maciel’s presence ensures the conversation includes hospitals, clean air, and public health workers. Her message is simple but transformative: safeguarding the planet means safeguarding the people on it.
— SDG News Spotlight, COP30 Edition
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