The following is a transcript of remarks delivered by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell at an event organized by Wellcome, on the first day of the official Pre-COP ministerial meeting, on Monday 5 October 2026 in Fiji.
Bula vinaka.
Thank you to Wellcome, and to the Government and people of Fiji.
Your partnership with other Pacific islands and Australia over this crucial week is a vital launchpad to COP31 in Antalya.
Here in the Pacific, climate change is no abstraction.
It is felt in homes, villages, farms, fisheries and clinics; in journeys for care; and in the availability and cost of food, water, power and transport.
Pacific leadership is just as real: rooted in dignity, culture, stewardship, and community.
These powerful values - along with your laser focus on solutions - should guide our journey to COP31.
Friends,
The climate policy process is measured in degrees, targets and finance. But a deep test of climate action is far, far simpler: whether we protect life at its most fragile.
We are in a new, hotter world, as the world continues to burn planet-heating fossil fuels, overwhelmingly in G20 economies.
The last eleven years smashed records.
As El Niño conditions remind us how quickly heat and disruption can intensify, we should be very clear: we are in an entirely new operating environment.
Rising temperatures mean rising danger in pregnancy.
Climate-driven extreme heat during pregnancy is increasingly linked to premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight, and maternal complications.
New data out today - from a survey commissioned by Wellcome of maternal health professionals in five countries across five continents - is both compelling and deeply worrying.
Almost three-quarters of health-care professionals, 73% to be precise, reported that heat-linked cases or complications have increased over the past five years.
More than four in five respondents [(81%] - are either concerned or very concerned that extreme heat will increasingly put maternal, fetal and newborn health at risk without more action.
Nearly all respondents have cared for a pregnant woman [98%] or baby [99%]) whose health they consider was affected by extreme heat.
Behind those numbers are human stories: an expectant mother's journey to clinic delayed by dangerous heat; a midwife working through unsafe temperatures; a newborn needing specialist care - often in scant supply in vulnerable nations; a family wracked with worry.
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.
This faultline must not become another deep chasm of climate-driven suffering, inequality and injustice.
Pregnancy should be a time of hope.
But for millions, it is becoming a time of anxiety, as climate impacts fill everyday life with risk. As extreme heat and other climate-driven disasters strain health systems, and imperil essentials like food, water and power.
No one is immune. But the risks and impacts are not shared equally.
Someone working outdoors, living in unregulated housing, travelling far to a clinic, or relying on facilities without water, power or cooling, cannot be protected by advice alone.
'Staying cool' is simply not an option when there is no cool place to go.
A safe birth is already too often shaped by geography, income and access to care. Without action, extreme heat will widen that injustice.
We cannot let worsening climate impacts become permanent pitfalls for maternity wards and families everywhere.
Friends,
I am a parent, but I cannot pretend to know what it feels like to carry a pregnancy through those conditions.
Mothers, midwives, doctors, nurses and families speak from lived experience. We should listen.
For small islands - and other nations who did practically nothing to create this climate crisis - it underscores the need for support and support at scale.
The tripling of adaptation finance agreed at COP30 in Belém must be delivered. Nations must pull together - with the whole financial system - to make 1.3 trillion dollars annually for developing nations become a reality.
To help build systemic resilience and to speed up shifts to clean, affordable and secure energy - which effective healthcare systems rely on.
Wellcome's Birthright Campaign and the World Health Organization's work in this area really matters because they can help close dangerous gaps.
Three priorities stand out.
First, make pregnancy and care for newborns part of adaptation, heat and health planning.
What is not named in a plan is too often not funded, not measured and not protected.
The Paris Agreement is clear that adaptation should be gender responsive, participatory and transparent.
A prime example is ensuring maternal and newborn health is reflected in national adaptation and heat action plans, backed by the resources and services needed to protect those who need it most - from resilient clinics and reliable power and water to trained health workers.
Second, turn evidence into protection.
That means clearer guidance, training, heat alerts, safer facilities, water, power, and health systems ready before crisis arrives.
Third, measure and analyse, in order to improve.
Harm that is not counted is too easily ignored.
As temperatures rise, data must show where risks are growing, which interventions work, which communities are most exposed, and where finance and technology support is needed.
International cooperation can support that effort.
The Belém Gender Action Plan strengthens gender responsive climate action, data, finance and participation.
And it creates space for countries and others to assess how health, gender-based violence, care work and more are affected by climate impacts.
This can help build a stronger evidence base and inform the next Global Stocktake.
The Belém Adaptation Indicators can also help track progress towards climate-resilient health services and reducing climate-related illnesses and death.
The COP31 Presidency of Türkiye, working with Australia's President of Negotiations, are to be commended for making health a key priority, building on the work of Brazil last year.
Across every culture, the arrival of a child is precious.
So we should all be able to agree.
A changing climate must never be accepted as a reason pregnancy and birth become less safe.
A newborn's healthy start must never depend on a family's ability to escape the heat;
This work is urgent, deeply human, and we all share the responsibility to drive it forward together.
I thank you.
