Thinking of Climate and Health within an Actionable Framework

India Climate Collaborative

It is a game I learned during my work in PATH. During team meetings, when discussions became intense and we needed a coffee break, we played this game with words. Building acronyms. Breaking words into meaningful expansions. In one such meeting, we were discussing data. One of us asked what does ideal data look like. Someone said data must be accessible to all. Therefore, data must be digitized and available at the click of a button to anyone who seeks to access the data. Someone said that the most important thing about data is that it must be actionable. Another colleague said that data must be available in time for action to happen. And the team came up with a definition of data: ‘digitally accessible timely actionable’ information. The first letter of each word sums the word data. There are many such examples. These words were created out of fun-filled exercises but have remained with me forever.

This week I attended a wonderful conference on climate and health. National Impacts and Adaptation Convening of India Climate Collaborative convened by the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation. Two days of intense conversation among agencies and experts from the field of climate and health in India. There were policy influencers, scientists, economists, public health experts and most importantly representatives of civil societies. I am a very young participant in the climate health domain. Therefore, I cherished the rich conversation and took notes profusely.

Today I spent some time revisiting my notes from the meeting and adding those to my One Drive Climate folder. There were conversations around collective action that must cater to local needs of communities to build climate resilience. Siloed actions have lesser impact than integrated actions across climate adaptation and mitigation in resilient health systems. A strong measurement, learning, and evaluation framework must back our actions. There is much more to do in the research space to generate more evidence for policies and action. Finally, the speakers spoke of technology — technologies like AI and how those could be best adapted to advance climate resilience.

I had written down some of these words randomly. Over a cup of strong black coffee, the words fell in order. Climate got a new meaning with these words as Collective Localized Integrated Measurable Action (that is) Technology-driven and Evidence-based.

For me, this is helpful as it helps me to put the climate resilience work in a framework in its expanded form.

Happy Weekend to all.