Health experts are urging countries to earmark billions of dollars of the financing to be pledged at the COP29 summit to fund healthcare policies as pollution and extreme weather events take their toll on humans’ well-being.
With the world reeling from a string of extreme weather events this year, hospitals and health workers from Nigeria to India have had to deal with disease outbreaks linked to floods and the effects of deadly heatwaves, while responding to new disease patterns linked to rising temperatures across the globe.
“Human health is the most compelling argument for climate action,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said at an event on health and the climate at COP29 in Baku.
Rising temperatures have contributed to heart disease and fuelled the spread of communicable diseases, he said. Air pollution was causing some 7 million premature deaths each year, and climate change was driving food insecurity and malnutrition.
Here is how global warming is affecting our health.
Air pollution
The United Nations has called air pollution “the biggest environmental health risk of our time.”
Airborne pollutants are responsible for about one-third of deaths from stroke, chronic respiratory disease and lung cancer, as well as a quarter of deaths from heart attacks.
Outdoor pollution from fossil fuels and the burning of biomass, such as wood and charcoal, led to about 3.3 million deaths in 2021, while indoor air pollution linked to dirty fuels used for cooking and other activities caused 2.3 million deaths in 2020 across 65 countries, according to a study published in the Lancet journal in October.
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Governments need to think of how lowering people’s air pollution exposure can lead to fewer asthma exacerbations and heart attacks, and how these health benefits can help offset the cost of taking that action.
Jeni Miller, executive director, Global Climate and Health Alliance
Although most countries include health considerations in their national climate plans, the health cost of air pollution specifically was missing from two-thirds of national climate plans submitted by countries to the UN, according to the Global Climate Health Alliance scorecard last year.
