Lancet Countdown Report: Climate Crisis Must Be Declared a Global Health Emergency

According to the latest report published by the Lancet Countdown, climate change has transformed into a chronic global health emergency that has rapidly increased health risks since the Paris Agreement entered into force. The report called on the World Health Organization and the United Nations to officially declare climate change a global health emergency.

The Lancet Countdown report stated that the past 11 years have been the warmest on record, and annual heat-related deaths have increased by approximately 36 percent in recent decades. It was noted that a record was broken with 710,000 deaths associated with heat in 2023 alone, and more than 70 percent of these deaths were attributed to human-induced climate change. It was recorded that the climate crisis creates favorable conditions for the frequency of droughts, extreme rainfall, and the spread of vector-borne diseases such as dengue and Zika.

The authors of the report argue that an official state of emergency will turn global climate action into a mandatory and coordinated emergency management. Proposed steps include an immediate ban on new fossil fuel exploration and extraction activities, the phase-out of coal-fired power generation by 2035, and the transition to plant-based diets.