Lancet: ‘Climate-related health risks are worsening due to delayed action’

A team of 122 researchers from United Nations agencies and academic institutions worldwide has published an article in The Lancet warning that climate-related health risks are worsening.

More people face dangerous heat, food insecurity, and exposure to pathogens and other threats. The report was published on Wednesday in advance of the climate negotiations scheduled for next month in Azerbaijan. The article contained an urgent plea for more decisive government action to protect lives.

The international monitoring project on which the concerning findings are based was established eight years ago at the time of the Paris Agreement.

Paris Climate Agreement

Despite the initial hope inspired by the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world is now dangerously close to breaching its target of limiting global multiyear mean heating to 1·5°C.

The annual mean surface temperature reached a record high of 1·45°C above the pre-industrial baseline in 2023, and new temperature highs were recorded throughout 2024. The report states that climatic extremes are increasingly claiming lives and livelihoods worldwide.

“The relentless expansion of fossil fuels and record-breaking greenhouse gas emissions compounds these dangerous health impacts and is threatening to reverse the limited progress made so far and put a healthy future further out of reach,” Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown project at University College London, said in a statement.

40 health risk indicators

For the first time, the Lancet Countdown project, which has been tracking a set of more than 40 climate health risk indicators since 2016, included measures of increased exposure to extreme precipitation and desert dust.

This highlights the wide range of impacts caused by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

They also examined the effect of rising night-time temperatures on sleep loss as part of their study of how climate change can affect mental health and wellbeing. Many risk indicators were driven higher because 2023 was the hottest year on record.

Some of the team’s most dramatic health findings:

• Heat-related mortality of people older than 65 increased by 167 percent compared with the 1990s. Such deaths would have risen because the aging population is more significant. Still, the researchers concluded the increase is 102 percentage points higher than it would have been with no temperature rise.

• Heat exposure led to 512 billion potential work hours lost in 2023, mainly in the agricultural sector – 49 percent above the 1990-1999 average.

• Climate conditions favorable for the transmission of illnesses from the Asian tiger mosquito and the so-called ‘yellow fever mosquito,’ and 2023 was the worst year ever recorded for dengue globally.

• The researchers said the number of days of extreme precipitation increased by 61 percent of the global land area. This, in turn, increases the risk of flooding, infectious disease spread, and water contamination.

“People worldwide face record-breaking threats to their wellbeing, health, and survival from the rapidly changing climate,” the authors concluded.

“This report is a clarion call to act now to protect ourselves, each other, and future generations,” Helen Clark, the former New Zealand prime minister who chairs the independent board that oversees the Lancet Countdown project, said in a statement.

Comments

Ready to join the conversation?

You must be an active subscriber to leave a comment.

Subscribe Today

You Might Also Like