Experts call for climate change to be declared a global health emergency as harms accelerate

What the report found

The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, led by University College London with the World Health Organization, was published on 28 October 2026. Its authors, 146 researchers from more than 30 countries according to EL PAÍS and El Periódico, say some climate-linked health harms intensified faster in the decade after the 2015 Paris Agreement (2016-2025) than in the decade before it (2006-2015). The study tracks 54 indicators, covering heat, air pollution, disease transmission, energy infrastructure, adaptation, research financing, legislation, extreme weather and economic damage. Wellcome Trust, a charity, funded the report.

Heat deaths and the economic toll

Heat is the starkest example in the report. It links an average of 540,800 heat deaths a year in 2016-2023 to climate change in 369,900 cases (68%), compared with 219,100 a year (55%) in 2006-2015. The Independent reports a single-year figure of 710,000 heat deaths in 2023, with over 70% attributed directly to human-caused warming. The yearly increase in climate-driven heat deaths more than doubled over the same period, and heat cost the world an estimated $1.07 trillion in lost potential income in 2025.

2006-2015 average219,100

2016-2023 average369,900

2006-2015 average

219100 deaths per year

2016-2023 average

369900 deaths per year

Data from the article text

Working in extreme heat exposes people to heat exhaustion, illness or injury, and ultimately to lost income and livelihoods. Ollie Jay of the University of Sydney's Heat and Health Research Center said deaths are only "the tip of the iceberg".

“Except that iceberg is not melting, it's growing every year.”

Beneath that surface sit heatstroke, lost sleep and chronic conditions that worsen.

Drought, groundwater and energy

Severe drought affected nearly 52% of global land for at least one month in 2025, the second-highest level recorded. Satellite analyses show that 80% of Earth's land has seen shifts in wet and dry groundwater storage since 2003, a change that threatens sanitation and food security. Clean energy funding reached nearly double fossil fuel investment in 2025, while reduced air pollution prevented roughly 323,000 deaths a year in 77 nations where fossil emissions fell after 2016. The authors caution that fossil fuels still supply over 80% of world energy and produce the emissions driving the crisis. The report also points to recent UN warnings that global temperatures will breach the 1.5C threshold, and calculates that the top 100 oil and gas producers are set to exceed 1.5C-compatible production limits by 150% by 2040.

Why the authors want an emergency declaration

The authors want climate change officially recognized and treated as a global health emergency, with health guiding both policy and funding priorities. Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, recommends that the UN and countries present a new global mechanism for health emergency response. She points to the WHO's existing Public Health Emergency of International Concern mechanism, used for diseases that spread across several countries, as one possible model for that tool. Alan Dangour, director of climate and health at Wellcome Trust, put the message bluntly.

Dangour argued that success should be measured by lives saved and health outcomes improved, not by emissions targets or degrees Celsius.

Paris goals and the road to COP31

The Paris Agreement aims to keep global warming well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and ideally below 1.5C, with countries' emissions pledges revised upward every five years. The study was published ahead of the UN COP31 climate conference next month, which El Periódico places in Antalya, Turkey. The authors direct their call at the authorities who will prepare for that meeting, asking them to put health at the centre of all climate choices, from cutting emissions to allocating funds.