‘We’re calling for climate change to be formally recognized as a global health emergency’

By the Climate Centre

The 2026 Lancet Countdown report on the links between climate and health says the growth of renewable energy in recent years “has exceeded expectations, delivering health and economic benefits globally”, while tackling climate change has become a priority for global health. But it adds that “emissions continue to reach record highs [and] climate change is increasingly affecting health and threatening people’s survival worldwide”.

“The window of opportunity to avoid a potentially catastrophic future is rapidly closing. Weakening multilateralism and growing climate change disinformation, denialism, and scepticism are now increasingly undermining collective action and threatening to reverse progress to date.”

The Countdown report, issued yesterday, documents the growing health impacts of climate change through more than 50 key indicators while also identifying opportunities for a health-centred response.

These indicators show that, since the Paris Agreement, “people have experienced not only increasing climate change-related health impacts and risks, but also an acceleration in these changes across numerous impacts compared with the previous decade.”

‘Rapidly growing threats’

With global heat, for example, during 2016–23 heat was associated with an average of 540,800 deaths per year, reaching a record-high of 710,000 globally in 2023, of which just over 70 per cent were attributed to the influence of climate change; less developed countries experienced the highest proportion of heat-related deaths.

More frequent heatwaves and extreme droughts are increasingly threatening food security – a trend that has accelerated, while extreme precipitation has also accelerated, “exacerbating the risk and occurrence of health-threatening floods and landslides.”

The world has also seen expanding environmental suitability for the mosquitoes that carry dengue, malaria and West Nile virus.

Marina Romanello, Lancet Countdown Executive Director, said yesterday: “Real progress has been made in clean energy, health-system readiness and health-protective regulation – all of which are already delivering real benefits to local communities. However, progress has been too slow, too small, and it isn’t reaching those who need to most.

“That is why we are calling for climate change to be formally recognized as a global health emergency, with health placed at the centre of every climate decision.”

Countdown says the current severe El Niño “threatens to compound the impacts of climate change and trigger unprecedented climate-related humanitarian crises globally. Because of the rapidly growing threats over the past decade, climate change has become a global health emergency.”

A safer future?

Recent cuts in development aid “further constrain resources, exacerbating risks in the most vulnerable countries and posing growing threats to global health,” it adds, as well as “[t]he tightening grip of fossil fuels pushing the world towards an increasingly dangerous future.” Global subsidies to fossil fuels reached record levels in 2022–24, with ten countries spending more on these in 2024 than on their health systems, even alongside increased investment in renewables.

More broadly, the Lancet Countdown concludes: “Incipient progress is underway, and new pathways are emerging to deliver a healthier future … a safer future remains possible but it requires rapid, system-wide, evidence-informed efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect populations from the climate change hazards that can no longer be avoided.”

The Countdown report on health and climate – which includes scientists, engineers, energy specialists, economists, public health professionals and doctors – is published every year by the The Lancet medical journal ahead of the UN climate talks.

Mothers at Mt Darwin hospital in Zimbabwe use umbrellas to shield themselves and their babies from the intense sun, reflecting how simple shade can help protect infants and caregivers from rising heat. This year’s Lancet Countdown report says deaths associated with extreme heat rose to a record 710,000 globally in 2023. (File photo: Isabelle Lange/GHHIN-EJN Extreme Heat Photo Contest 2025)