KPMG Hosts Climate And Health Roundtable
Dr. Ed Fitzgerald and Charlotte Reboul of KPMG co-hosted a roundtable discussion titled “Climate & Health: Moving from Challenges to Transformation.”
A spokesperson said, “Dr. Ed Fitzgerald, Head of Healthcare for KPMG Islands Group and Co-Lead for Healthcare in Emerging Markets for KPMG International, and Charlotte Reboul, Senior Manager, Policy & Sustainability Advisory for KPMG Islands Group and Lead for Climate & Health for KPMG International, co-hosted a roundtable discussion, Climate & Health: Moving from Challenges to Transformation.
“The session, a satellite event held during the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week NYC 2025, brought together international healthcare leaders and key stakeholders from over 12 countries and third- sector organisations, including the World Economic Forum, UNHCR, and Amref.
The Climate and Health Nexus: A Critical Priority
“The climate and health nexus, the interconnected relationship between climate change and human health, has been recognised as a significant global threat to human wellbeing.
“Increasing instances of heat-related illnesses, extreme weather events, infrastructure vulnerabilities, and the rising burden on health systems underscore the urgent need for integrated solutions to help mitigate the impact.
“Island nations, such as Bermuda, remain particularly vulnerable to the human cost and financial burden, with a global estimated $1.1 trillion in direct health system costs tied to climate impacts.
Challenges That Demand Innovation
“Participants shared on-the-ground realities of climate health impacts, such as hurricanes leaving hospitals in the Bahamas flooded and paper-based patient records destroyed, and the resurgence of certain disease in Ethiopia, which experienced the highest number of Malaria-related deaths in seven years in 2024.
“Beyond the infrastructure challenges, access to financing remains a key barrier, with government resources stretched thin and access to existing climate finance or innovative financing mechanisms remaining limited in healthcare.”
“Building resilient healthcare facilities and climate-proof health systems will cost more upfront but could deliver exponential savings in the future. The difficulty is not just financing projects, but ensuring systems integrate resilience across all aspects of healthcare. This includes not just infrastructure, but also care delivery, workforce, and supply chains – all accompanied by community engagement to ensure inclusive planning, education on the risks and mitigations, and empowering communities to address their social determinants of health so that they are best prepared to meet these challenges together,” noted Dr. Ed Fitzgerald, Head of Healthcare for KPMG Islands Group.
Solutions for Global Health Resilience
The spokesperson said, “A common discussion theme for solutions revolved around the need for innovation, from leveraging indigenous knowledge on climate resilience and community-led provision of climate- informed care and training to AI-powered surveillance and modelling, new tech to deploy electronic health records, and energy-efficient healthcare facilities.
“The attendees discussed how emerging markets, especially those in Africa and Small Island Developing States [SIDS] are leading globally on creating and implementing solutions and programmes addressing the climate and health nexus. The call is now for collaboration on scaling these solutions.
Financing Innovation as a Game-Changer
“The role of innovative financing mechanisms, including outcome-based, debt swaps and blended tools were flagged as promising mechanisms to unlock resources for scaling efforts was highlighted, but their use remains limited in healthcare.
“However, innovative financing mechanisms tend to have limited scope. It was noted that traditional, fragmented approaches to financing no longer fit the scale of the problems being addressed.”
A People-First Focus
“Health is the human face of climate change. Embedding health in climate conversations is a powerful way to incentivize climate action. On the other side, no credible conversation on climate adaptation and resilience can happen without speaking about health, as it is our first line of defence. Climate and health specialists don’t yet speak the same language, and further efforts should be made to create sharing spaces between the two sectors, something KPMG has been trying to contribute to in recent years,” said Charlotte Reboul, Climate & Health Global Lead, Policy & Sustainability Advisory, KPMG Islands Group.
Next Steps
The spokesperson said, “The roundtable concluded with a resounding call to collaborate on financing and scaling the solutions discussed during the meeting, sharing lessons learned from one jurisdiction to another.
“KPMG and KPMG Islands Group are preparing a white paper summarizing the key learnings and action items from the session, to be shared with participants and beyond ahead of the next planned meeting at COP30.”
1. Can Dr. Ed Fitzgerald and Charlotte Reboul correctly define “climate change.”
2. Expressed as percentages, can Dr. Ed Fitzgerald and Charlotte Reboul tell us how certain NOAA & NASA are of their hottest year claims and why?
3. Would Dr. Ed Fitzgerald and Charlotte Reboul put their money in a bank with a record-keeping system as poor as The Met, NOAA, or NASA?
I bet no one asked such questions, and if they did, no answers would be given.