World held hostage by reliance on fossil fuels, Christiana Figueres warns – and climate health impacts are ‘mother of all injustices’

A woman in the lagoon at Funafuti, Tuvalu – a low-lying South Pacific country that may become uninhabitable within decades due to sea-level rise caused by the climate crisis. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Countries are being “held hostage” by their reliance on fossil fuels, a former UN climate chief has warned, describing the health impacts of climate change as “the mother of all injustices”.

Christiana Figueres, an international climate negotiator who helped deliver the Paris agreement signed in 2016, made the comments as she was announced on Wednesday as co-chair of a Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality.