Many policies and individual choices have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and produce major health co-benefits. The phase out of polluting energy systems, for example, or the promotion of public transportation and active movement, could both reduce carbon emissions and cut the burden of household and ambient air pollution, which cause 7 million premature deaths per year.
WHO’s work plan on climate change and health includes:
Advocacy & Partnerships: to coordinate with partner agencies within the UN system, and ensure that health is properly represented in the climate change agenda, as well as to provide and disseminate information on the threats that climate change presents to human health, and opportunities to promote health while cutting carbon emissions;
Monitoring science and evidence: to coordinate reviews of the scientific evidence on the links between climate change and health; assess country's preparedness and needs when facing climate change; and to develop a global research agenda;
Supporting countries to protect human health from climate change: strengthening national capacities and improving the resilience and adaptive capacity of health systems to deal with the adverse health effects of climate change
Building capacity on climate change and human health: to assist countries to build capacity to reduce health vulnerability to climate change, and promote health while reducing carbon emissions
Climate change
Climate change is impacting human lives and health in a variety of ways. It threatens the essential ingredients of good health - clean air, safe drinking water, nutritious food supply, and safe shelter - and has the potential to undermine decades of progress in global health.
Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone. The direct damage costs to health is estimated to be between USD 2-4 billion per year by 2030.
Areas with weak health infrastructure – mostly in developing countries – will be the least able to cope without assistance to prepare and respond. WHO supports countries in building climate-resilient health systems and tracking national progress in protecting health from climate change.
Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases through better transport, food and energy-use choices results in improved health, particularly through reduced air pollution. The Paris Agreement on climate change is therefore potentially the strongest health agreement of this century. WHO supports countries in assessing the health gains that would result from the implementation of the existing Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Agreement, and the potential for larger gains from more ambitious climate action.
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