Climate change both directly and indirectly affects the health of people CHAI serves. Extreme heat, natural disasters, social unrest, insufficient food supplies, and disease are some of the consequences projected to ravage global health in coming decades, exceeding the human cost of deadly pandemics like COVID-19. The disproportionate impact climate change will have on low-income populations also threatens to worsen existing inequities and access to health services.

Health programs themselves also contribute to climate change via emissions in procurement and service delivery. Research indicates global emissions from the pharmaceutical industry are more significant than those of the automotive sector, even though it is a smaller market.

Internally, we are revising our operations and procedures to better serve the climate and to be accountable for our own carbon emissions. This includes building offsetting into new proposal budgets and updating guidance on travel and other ways to reduce emissions as we execute our work.

CHAI completed its first offset purchase in 2022, covering a portion of emissions from 2021. Through CHAI’s efforts at working with existing donors and building offsets into new grant proposals, the number of CHAI donors allowing for grant funding to be put towards offsets has grown in 2022. We are in the process of planning our next offset purchase, focusing on accredited programs that benefit countries where CHAI works.