Climate change should be declared health emergency as health risks can no longer be ignored

Climate change has become an escalating chronic global health emergency, with health risks and impacts increasing rapidly since the Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016, according to the latest Lancet Countdown report.Therefore, the authors of the report are calling on the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations as a whole to formally declare climate change a global health emergency.They argue that a formal emergency designation would shift global climate action from slow, voluntary commitments to mandatory, coordinated emergency management.

This would lead to strengthened health surveillance and early warning systems, mobilised resources rapidly, established legally binding accountability mechanisms and introduced preventive public health measures.A measure, they consider, would reflect the scale of the threat. “As populations grow and age, more people are at risk today than a decade ago, further increasing the scale and urgency of the adaptation task,” the authors wrote.

The report's indicators show that, since the Paris Agreement entered into force, climate-related health risks and impacts have not only increased but have also accelerated across multiple areas compared with the previous decade.

These include some heat-related health risks, drought incidence, extreme precipitation and climatic suitability for dengue transmission. The faster pace of these changes suggests that existing measures are insufficient to protect public health.Other proposed measures include an immediate global ban on new fossil fuel exploration and exploitation, the complete phase-out of coal-fired power generation by 2035, and a shift towards predominantly plant-based diets.

Climate - related health threats continue to growDespite efforts to tackle climate change, greenhouse gas emissions continue to reach record highs. Climate change is increasingly affecting health and threatening lives worldwide, while the window of opportunity to avoid a potentially catastrophic future is rapidly closing.

The past 11 years have been the hottest on record, the report noted, while annual heat-related deaths have risen by nearly 36% over recent decades.In 2023 alone, heat was linked to a record 710,000 deaths, with more than 70% of these deaths attributable to human-caused climate change.Climate change is also making conditions more suitable for the transmission of vector-borne diseases, including dengue and Zika.Extreme weather and wildfires are also increasingly threatening human health, particularly among vulnerable populations and in regions with limited capacity to respond to climate-related impacts.Against this backdrop, the authors say an urgent change of approach is needed “to change course and protect the health and survival of present and future generations.”