Against the backdrop of the 65th World Health Assembly in Geneva, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and the private health insurance company, Bupa, convened an expert dialogue on two of the most urgent challenges of the 21st century: the global diabetes epidemic and climate change. Both are global phenomena, and have been identified separately as threatening to derail human development and economic growth; both are rapidly accelerating and are fuelled by changes in the way we live and work; both are impacting on all countries – with no government having these challenges under control; and both will have intergenerational effects on the health, wellbeing and security of future generations.