This article was originally published by the World Health Organization (WHO)

As the world braces for increasingly complex climate and health challenges, local innovations, Indigenous knowledge, and community-rooted practices take centre stage at the 2025 Global Conference on Climate and Health, co-hosted by the Government of Brazil, WHO, and PAHO, from 29 to 31 July in Brasília.

A key feature of the Conference, the Ideas Lab, spotlights a bold new wave of thinking and doing, showcasing pioneering efforts that span from predictive malaria mapping and clean air advocacy to artificial intelligence and sustainable healthcare. Designed to complement the official programme, the Ideas Lab serves as a platform to amplify innovative local and Indigenous knowledge, youth-led and technological solutions, and cross-sector policy approaches that link climate action with better health outcomes.

Over three days, participants are presenting replicable solutions that will inform and bolster the forthcoming Belém Health Action Plan across three key tracks: 1) Health Surveillance and Monitoring, 2) Evidence-Based Policy and Capacity Building, and 3) Innovation and Production.

“The Ideas Lab is about more than showcasing innovations. It’s about equity, participation, and policy relevance,” said Dr Maria Neira, Director, Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health, World Health Organization. “These sessions create space for communities to speak for themselves, to be heard, and to input into the COP30 process to put health at the heart of climate decisions.”

Ideas Lab contributors span Community-Based Organizations to universities, specialist networks to NGOs, with representation from across the globe.

Sessions include, among others:

• Mapping Toxic Transfers in Uganda: A cross-disciplinary project using geospatial tools, water testing, and health data to trace the impacts of climate-induced flooding on community health, while informing safe water and infrastructure policy.
• Predictive Modelling for climate-driven malaria dynamics: A predictive malaria system combining climate and health data to trigger targeted community interventions, co-led by women’s groups and rooted in local knowledge for urbanizing African Regions.
• Innovative Financing for Health Resilience: From Brazil to Indonesia, examples of blended capital solutions offer a roadmap to close the climate-health financing gap, especially critical for countries facing dwindling development aid.
• Adapting Health Supply Chains: A dialogue on how to future-proof the multitrillion-dollar health supply chain for climate resilience, equity, and sustainability.
• The Right to Clean Air: From Brazil to Australia and the pacific, inviting solidarity between communities experiencing escalating threats to air quality, health and cultural survival.
• AI for Climate-Resilient Health Systems: Showcasing how the Global South is pioneering artificial intelligence to strengthen pandemic preparedness and deliver culturally relevant, sustainable health interventions across 20 countries.
• Intergenerational dialogue plays a key role in transforming One Health ideas into concrete, sustainable actions and real-time solutions, where mechanisms for youth engagement in One Health can be adjusted to the needs and wants of each setting and context.

Equity is at the heart of the Global Conference and equitable solutions are highlighted throughout the Ideas Lab, with sessions exploring how climate change disproportionately impacts women, migrants, Indigenous peoples, and youth, and how these groups are also leading in climate and health action. Examples include the Emerge Study which examines the relationship between climate extremes, forced migration, and health in Latin America, and how migration can be supported as an adaptive strategy, and Youth for One Health, a proposal that is grounded in intergenerational justice and builds on youth councils globally to advocate for biodiversity, planetary health, and green cities.

Towards COP30: From dialogue to delivery

The Ideas Lab will feed directly into conference outcomes and COP30 preparations, helping generate actionable tools and knowledge products that can be adapted by countries, particularly through the Belém Health Action Plan. By fostering participation across regions and sectors, it aims to seed long-term collaboration across and between climate change action and human health.