As this article argues, human health – despite facing a serious threat from climate change – remains an ambivalent notion in the substantive, procedural, and institutional aspects as well as the implementation of both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. The article demonstrates that the climate change treaties are biased towards emission reductions largely through mitigation, and this bias is reflected in some domestic climate laws as well. Health is confined to the legal framework on adaptation, but faces challenges in the area of finance and sectoral coordination as well compliance. These challenges inhibit robust action by Parties to undertake health-related measures in the context of climate change. The article concludes by proposing reforms, including a rethinking of the global climate regime through reforms of global and domestic climate law as well as global health law. It proposes functional concepts of adaptive governance and global public goods as the basis for these reforms to bolster the standing of health in the climate legal regime.