Lancet Countdown Report Urges Global Health Emergency Declaration for Climate Change

Climate change should be formally recognized as a global health emergency, the authors of the 2026 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change said on October 28, releasing the report ahead of the COP31 climate summit in November. The tenth edition, produced by 146 researchers from more than 100 institutions in collaboration with the World Health Organization and Wellcome, tracks 54 indicators of how a warming climate affects human health worldwide.

A Record Toll From Heat

The report found that heat was linked to a record 710,000 deaths in 2023, with more than 70 percent of that toll attributable to human-caused climate change. Between 2016 and 2023, heat was associated with an average of 540,800 deaths a year, 68 percent of them caused by climate change, up from 55 percent in the decade before the Paris Agreement. The authors described the eight-year total of about three million heat-related deaths as roughly the population of Wales lost in that span.

According to the report, annual average heat-related deaths rose by nearly 36 percent in the years after the Paris Agreement compared with the previous decade. Extreme drought affected 51.8 percent of the world's land surface for at least one month in 2025, the second-worst year on record. Heat exposure also cut into worker productivity, costing the global economy more than one trillion dollars a year over the past three years, the researchers estimated, with Southeast Asia and Africa among the hardest hit.

Progress Too Slow, Authors Say

The report points to advances as well. Global investment in clean energy reached a record 2.1 trillion dollars in 2025, 82 percent more than investment in fossil fuels. Countries that cut fossil fuel air pollution are estimated to be protecting thousands of people from premature deaths each year, and more national health adaptation plans and climate-informed early warning systems are in place.

The report's executive director, Marina Romanello, said the health harms are growing faster than the global response and, in many cases, accelerating. The authors argue that progress has been too slow and too small to reach the people who need it most. They want WHO and the UN to use tools such as the International Health Regulations and to create a new instrument that formally recognizes climate change itself as a global health emergency. They call for an integrated, long-term response rather than reacting to one emergency after another, and for health to sit at the center of every climate decision, from emissions reductions to funding.

What It Means for Health Workers

For the public health workforce, the findings shift attention toward surveillance, early warning and emergency preparedness. WHO has said the world must stay ready for climate-linked outbreaks through sensitive monitoring, risk assessment and simulation exercises, skills that public health teams already use to track infectious disease. Heat, drought and extreme weather add new pressure to those systems while budgets in many countries remain tight.

The economic figures underline the stakes for employers and workers. Lost productivity from heat is a recurring cost to national economies, and the report links that burden to the same emissions driving health harms. Health systems that invest in climate-ready planning, training and response capacity are described by the authors as protecting both lives and livelihoods.

The next test comes at COP31 in November, where governments will weigh the call for a formal health emergency designation. The authors also want countries to strengthen national adaptation plans and expand financing for resilient health systems. Until then, the report leaves health ministries and public health agencies with a clear set of numbers to measure whether action, and the workforce behind it, keeps pace with the warming climate.