What are the health impacts of sea-level rise, and who should pay?

A core human need is fresh water, co-chair of new Lancet Commission says – with global empathy, connection and imagination all needed to mitigate climate harms

• World held hostage by reliance on fossil fuels, Christiana Figueres warns

• Christiana Figueres: Sea-level rise is a health crisis and we must hold polluters accountable

In November in Solomon Islands, the former Tongan health minister Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala stood outside the main hospital in Honiara and “watched seawater lapping at its outer walls”.

“The facility is now under threat, with plans under way to relocate it to higher ground – a massive and costly undertaking,” Saia, a surgeon and now the World Health Organization’s regional director for the western Pacific, tells the Guardian.