Lancet Countdown report urges declaring climate change a global health emergency

Right · 2The 10th annual Lancet Countdown report on health and climate change, reported on Wednesday 28 October 2026 (AFP's report says it was released that day), calls for climate change to be declared a global health emergency. 1 2 Left · 2The report was led by University College London and produced in collaboration with the World Health Organization; its authors say health harms have accelerated faster in the decade since the Paris Agreement than in the decade before. 3 4 Left · 2Heat was linked to an estimated record 710,000 deaths in 2023, the latest year with complete data, more than HIV or malaria; ABC News reports 71% were attributable to climate change, while Inside Climate News says more than 70%. 3 4

Mixed · 2Climate change is estimated to have caused nearly 3 million heat deaths between 2016 and 2023, and Deutsche Welle reports it was responsible for 68% of heat-related deaths in that period, up from 55% in the previous decade. 3 5 Right · 1Lancet Countdown executive director Marina Romanello said the three million heat deaths since the Paris Agreement were "roughly equivalent to the entire population of Wales being wiped out in the space of eight years" and that 68% were directly attributable to climate change; she said an emergency framing should bring "a cohesive long-term response" rather than responding "to emergency after emergency". 2 Right · 1Professor Ollie Jay of the University of Sydney said attributable deaths were estimated by taking heat deaths recorded by states and subtracting those that would have occurred without climate change. 1

Mixed · 2Heat cost an estimated $1.07 trillion in potential income, with Africa and South-East Asia hit hardest; Deutsche Welle says heat wiped out 573 billion potential working hours in 2025, with losses reaching 5% of GDP in vulnerable economies against 0.5% in more developed ones. 3 5 Right · 1According to AFP, warming cut worker productivity at a cost of over $1 trillion a year for three years, with South-East Asia and Africa losing the equivalent of 3.9% and 3.2% of GDP, against 0.2% for Europe and 1.5% for the Americas. 1 Left · 3Extreme drought is growing more than 700% faster than in the previous decade, and more than half of the world's land had extreme drought for at least a month in 2025; ABC News adds that the share of land hit by very extreme rainfall rose from 14.8% to 17.2%. 3 5 4

Centre · 1Deutsche Welle reports that heat waves and droughts pushed nearly 128 million more people into food insecurity in 2024 compared with the 1981–2010 average. 5 Left · 2The report also found some gains: cleaner air from clean energy avoided an estimated 323,000 deaths a year in about half of countries assessed, though increases elsewhere offset this globally, and ABC News reports clean energy investment reached a record $2.1 trillion in 2025. 3 4 Right · 1AFP also reports progress: 56 of the WHO's 194 member states have adapted health and early-warning systems since 2016, clean energy investment of $2.1 trillion in 2025 was double fossil fuel investment, and the $323,000-a-year air pollution saving covers at least 77 countries, while fossil fuel air pollution still causes 2.73 million deaths a year. 2

Mixed · 2Progress is described as too slow: fossil fuels still supply more than 80% of global energy, energy-related emissions hit a record in 2024, and Deutsche Welle reports net fossil fuel subsidies have doubled since 2016 to $6.2 trillion. 4 5 Mixed · 2The authors propose that the WHO create a new way to formally recognise climate change as a health emergency and coordinate a global response; Deutsche Welle says it would be a new WHO instrument created by the UN and member states, since the existing Public Health Emergency of International Concern mechanism was built for short-term emergencies. 4 5 Left · 1ABC News lists six priorities for a health-centred response, including making health a core measure of climate action, cutting emissions quickly and fairly, shared climate and health data, and more grants and low-interest loans from wealthier countries. 4

Mixed · 2Funding for health adaptation is scarce: developing countries estimate they need about $3.3 billion a year, only about a third was committed in 2024, and aid cuts led by the US and then Germany are widening the gap, according to Deutsche Welle; Inside Climate News notes that Nepal's first emergency allocation from the UN Loss and Damage Fund, $20 million, is under 1% of its $2.7 billion in initial flood losses. 5 3 Right · 1Climate-health research funding rose sevenfold to $316 million in 2024, but 84% goes to researchers in wealthy countries; Romanello said some data sources, particularly US fossil fuel subsidy figures, disappeared this year, and that geopolitical instability has pushed climate and health into the background. 1 Left · 1ABC News (Australia) says this is the first time the Countdown authors quantified heat deaths directly due to human-caused climate change; the report states "Climate change has become a global health emergency", singles out the US for promoting fossil fuel expansion and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and cites lobbying and disinformation by fossil fuel interests as an obstacle. 6

Left · 1Co-author Professor Paul Beggs of Macquarie University said no one is immune to climate health effects and called the report an urgent call to put health ahead of fossil fuels; ABC also notes peer-reviewed studies attributing over 50,000 European heat deaths this summer, about two-thirds to climate change, and a warning that a severe El Niño could compound impacts. 6 Left · 1The report comes weeks before the COP31 climate conference in November, and Inside Climate News notes that President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement for a second time at the start of the year. 3 Mixed · 2Gulf News stresses that the call is for formal recognition, not a WHO emergency declaration, and that the recommendation comes from the report's authors even though WHO collaborated on the report; it lists COP31 in Turkey, and ABC Australia notes Australia holds the COP presidency. 7 6