Climate change should be declared a global health emergency, as its impacts on health advance more rapidly than the actions to combat them, specialists argue in a report released today.
The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change report indicates that some of the health damages caused by climate change intensified more rapidly in the decade following the Paris Agreement’s entry into force (2016–2025) than in the previous decade (2006–2015).
And this, according to specialists, is due to climate action measures not moving “at the pace required,” according to a statement from the scientific journal Lancet.
The authors of the report, led by University College London (UCL) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), therefore argue that “climate change should be officially recognized and treated as a global health emergency and that health should guide both policy and funding priorities to combat those changes.”
The investments in clean energy, more resilient health systems, broader health-protection legislation, and a growing body of scientific evidence since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 “have brought tangible benefits” to population health, but these advances are “too slow, insufficient and inconsistent” to offset “the growing damage caused by climate change driven by fossil fuel use,” the statement explains.
According to the report, “heat was associated with an estimated average of 540,800 deaths per year between 2016 and 2023, 68% of them (369,900) caused by climate change, an increase from 55% (219,100) per year in the 2006–2015 period.”
At the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), held in Paris, world governments agreed to prevent global temperatures from rising above 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and preferably not exceed 1.5°C.
“A decade after the Paris Agreement, our conclusions are unequivocal: the health damages caused by climate change are growing faster than the global response to them and, in many cases, even accelerating,” says Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, cited in the press release.
The report represents the work of 146 multidisciplinary researchers from more than 100 institutions across about thirty countries, and its figures “point to a clear emergency,” it adds.
“This is not a gradual worsening; it is a drastic shift that needs to be recognized as the global health emergency that it is,” reinforces Marina Romanello.
Published a little over a week before the start of COP31, which runs from 9 to 20 November in Turkey, the report monitors 54 indicators on the impacts of climate change and the measures to combat them in health.
The Lancet Countdown’s 10th report finds that progress in the climate transition remains “below expectations,” predicting the gradual phase-out of fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) and their replacement by renewable energy sources (solar, wind and hydro) to limit global warming.
It also notes that national governments, international organizations and the private sector are now less engaged in health and climate issues, reversing earlier progress, as well as that funding for climate adaptation remains well below what is needed.
“This report is a firm warning that climate change represents a health emergency. What is lacking is not evidence, but the political will to act,” says Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and chair of the Lancet Countdown Council, cited in the press release.
“Governments must strengthen their commitments to climate action and resume international cooperation. This must be accompanied by rapid emissions reductions and significantly greater support for adaptation, particularly for communities least responsible for climate change and most vulnerable to its impacts.”
