Latest Equinet Updates

Across East and Southern Africa, accelerating climate change through droughts, heat waves, floods, and storms threatens farming-dependent communities with harvest losses, food insecurity, and displacement, while creating health crises including malaria, diarrhoea, and malnutrition that disproportionately impact poor households, women, and youth who lack resources to adapt or relocate, even as transnational agribusiness corporations clearing smallholder land for export-oriented production profit amid widespread poverty. This video documents community-led adaptation strategies including seed saving, rainwater harvesting, agroecology, tree food processing for income generation, health impact assessments for new investments, and demands for agribusiness taxation to support local services, emphasizing that climate change deepens existing inequalities while transnational corporations externalize costs onto vulnerable populations, but collective action at local, national, regional, and global levels linking health equity and climate justice offers pathways to protect communities, share knowledge, develop local solutions, strengthen solidarity, and ensure well-being for all.

The final thematic webinar in EQUINET's climate and health equity webinar series was held in March 2025, It brought together 52 participants from east and southern Africa and internationally, focusing on the interplay for health equity between climate and migration in and beyond the region. Organised and moderated by TARSC, three panellists gave presentations: Mr Francis Pawandiwa, Coordinator, Nyahunure Community Trust, Mutoko district, Zimbabwe, from a community lens; Dr Moeketsi Modisenyane, School of Health Systems and Public Health, Faculty of Health, University of Pretoria, from a national and regional lens and Hannah Marcus, Environmental Health Working Group, World Federation of Public Health Associations, covering the international lens. People migrate to exploit new resources and opportunities, or are forced to migrate due to conflict, land expropriations, economic, food and water insecurity, emergencies and loss of livelihoods. When climate changes intensify these drivers, it also increases migration. The webinar interrogated the relationships between climate, migration and health equity at the local, national and global levels, and suggested actions to be taken to mitigate the impacts. This brief summarises the key issues raised on the role of climate change as a risk multiplier of drivers in sending communities leading to migration, for affected migrants along the route, and in the receiving communities. It highlights their health equity impacts in these three groups, the responses to these impacts and areas for further research.

EQUINET’s recommendations on integrated urban health in 2024 in Eastern and Southern Africa include measures to BUILD and ENABLE health promoting integrated improvements for urban health, including those that link improved environments to health (EQUINET, 2024). This case study exemplifies the ‘BUILD’ and ‘ENABLE’ agenda through a town council and social enterprise support of local income generating plastic waste reduction and recycling. The initiative has built women and young people’s skills in recycling and supported incomes, while also visibly reducing plastic pollution and protecting the environment. The initiative was enabled by strong community engagement and local leadership. Involving community members in its design and implementation built trust and relevance and fostered a sense of ownership that supports sustainability. The collaboration with schools, religious institutions and informal sector workers fostered a community centred circular economy that promotes equity, environmental conservation, and youth empowerment. The use of accessible, low-tech methods minimised the need for expensive infrastructure or specialised skills. Ideas could be adopted and replicated using locally available materials and knowledge. A revenue-generating model producing marketable goods, the contribution of the founder and fees obtained for the training has sustained operations and created income streams that reduce dependency on external funding.

This brief from the webinar on Climate, land rights and agroecological links to pandemics summarises key issues raised related to: climate links to land and agro-ecology in the region and the impacts on health equity and pandemics; actions proposed to address these issues at local, national, regional and in global level processes; and issues for further research and discussion. The session noted that current agricultural practices in East and Southern Africa are creating significant environmental and health challenges. Industrial agriculture relies heavily on chemical pesticides, which contribute to biodiversity loss, soil and water pollution, and increased zoonotic disease risks, exacerbating climate change impacts and creating conditions that make communities more vulnerable to pandemics. To address these challenges webinar speakers and participants noted that policies need to be re-oriented to support smallholder farmers and provide land security. Trade agreements that undermine seed sovereignty must be rejected and a One Health approach must be implemented to manage zoonotic disease risks. The brief emphasizes the importance of integrating climate adaptation and food security into local and national plans, and ensuring that farmer-led solutions are central to trade, investment, and climate policy discussions.