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UN Climate chief warns extreme heat creates new faultline for pregnancy, maternal health – EnviroNews
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The United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell, has warned that worsening extreme heat is creating a new and potentially fatal “faultline” in the global climate crisis, putting pregnant women, newborns and maternal health at increasing risk.
Stiell issued the warning on Monday, October 5, 2026, at the “Birthright! A Global Call to Action to Protect Pregnant Women from Global Heating” event in Fiji, where ministers and delegates are gathering for the Pacific Pre-COP31 meeting.
He said the impacts of climate change were no longer an abstraction in the Pacific, but were being experienced directly in homes, villages, farms, fisheries and clinics, as well as through disruptions to access to healthcare, food, water, electricity and transportation.
“The climate policy process is measured in degrees, targets and finance. But a deep test of climate action is far simpler: whether we protect life at its most fragile,” Stiell said.
According to him, the world is operating in a “new, hotter world” as planet-warming fossil fuels continue to be burned, with the consequences increasingly evident in human health.
He said rising temperatures were translating into rising risks during pregnancy, with climate-driven extreme heat increasingly linked to premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight and maternal complications.
Stiell cited new findings from a Wellcome-commissioned survey of maternal health professionals across five countries and five continents, describing the results as “compelling and deeply worrying.”
The survey found that 73 per cent of healthcare professionals reported increases over the past five years in heat-related cases or complications involving maternal health.
More than four in five respondents, or 81 per cent, said they were concerned or very concerned that extreme heat would increasingly threaten maternal, fetal and newborn health without stronger action.
The survey also found that 98 per cent of respondents had cared for a pregnant woman and 99 per cent had cared for a baby whose health they believed had been affected by extreme heat.
Stiell said the statistics represented real human experiences, including pregnant women struggling to reach healthcare facilities in dangerous heat, midwives working in unsafe temperatures and newborns requiring specialist treatment that may be unavailable in vulnerable countries.
“The picture is clear and very disturbing: as extreme heat worsens, pregnancy and birth are now a new faultline in the global climate crisis, and one which is potentially fatal,” he said.
He warned that the emerging climate-related risks to pregnancy must not become another source of inequality and injustice.
“Pregnancy should be a time of hope,” Stiell said, noting that for millions of women it was increasingly becoming a period of anxiety as extreme heat and other climate impacts placed additional pressure on health systems and threatened access to essential food, water and power.
He stressed that climate risks were not distributed equally.
People working outdoors, living in poorly regulated housing, travelling long distances to healthcare facilities or depending on clinics without reliable water, electricity or cooling systems could not be adequately protected simply by being advised to “stay cool.”
“‘Staying cool’ is simply not an option when there is no cool place to go,” he said.
Stiell warned that without urgent action, extreme heat could deepen existing inequalities in maternal healthcare, where the safety of childbirth is already influenced by geography, income and access to medical services.
He also called for the voices of mothers, midwives, doctors, nurses and families to be incorporated into climate and health policymaking, acknowledging that people directly experiencing the impacts were best placed to explain the challenges.
For Pacific island states and other countries that have contributed relatively little to the climate crisis, Stiell said greater international support was essential.
He called for the delivery of the tripling of adaptation finance agreed at COP30 in Brazil, alongside efforts to mobilise $1.3 trillion annually for developing countries, saying the funding was necessary to build systemic resilience and accelerate the transition to clean, affordable and secure energy.
He identified three priorities for protecting maternal and newborn health in a warming world.
First, governments should integrate pregnancy and newborn care into national adaptation, heat and health plans.
“What is not named in a plan is too often not funded, not measured and not protected,” he said.
He called for maternal and newborn health to be explicitly reflected in national adaptation and heat-action plans, supported by resilient healthcare facilities, reliable electricity and water, and adequately trained health workers.
Second, Stiell called for governments and health systems to turn evidence into practical protection.
This should include clearer medical guidance, healthcare-worker training, heat alerts, safer facilities, reliable water and electricity, and health systems prepared to respond before extreme heat and other climate-related emergencies strike.
Third, he stressed the importance of measuring and analysing climate-related health risks.
“Harm that is not counted is too easily ignored,” Stiell said, calling for stronger data to identify where risks are increasing, which interventions are effective, which communities are most exposed and where finance and technology are most urgently needed.
He said international cooperation could help strengthen this evidence base.
Stiell also pointed to the Belém Gender Action Plan, which he said strengthens gender-responsive climate action, data, finance and participation, while creating opportunities to assess the impacts of climate change on health, gender-based violence and care work.
He said the resulting evidence could contribute to the next Global Stocktake, while the Belém Adaptation Indicators could help track progress towards climate-resilient health services and reductions in climate-related illness and deaths.
Stiell commended the COP31 Presidency of Türkiye and Australia’s President of Negotiations for making health a key priority, building on the work undertaken by Brazil during COP30.
He concluded by stressing that protecting maternal and newborn health should be regarded as a universal climate priority.
“Across every culture, the arrival of a child is precious,” he said.
“A changing climate must never be accepted as a reason pregnancy and birth become less safe.”
He added: “A newborn’s healthy start must never depend on a family’s ability to escape the heat.”
Stiell said the challenge was urgent and deeply human, urging governments, health professionals, climate negotiators and international institutions to work together to ensure that climate action protects women and children from the growing dangers of extreme heat.