Since 2015, the average global exposure to urban green space has stayed low: 27% of urban centres were classified as moderately green or more in 2021
The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change
As humanity faces the threat of the climate crisis and its consequences for public health, it struggles with other systemic shocks: the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on global health, economies, and societies, and the energy and cost-of-living crises caused by our reliance on fossil fuels coupled with Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
The 2022 Global Report of the Lancet Countdown analyzed how climate change impacts our health and well-being, increases vulnerability to health threats, and how our reliance on fossil fuels exacerbates the harms generated by these crises.
«This year’s report is launched in the midst of a compounding crisis. We’re facing still the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and we’re still coping with the effects that has had on our health systems now, also with an energy crisis and a cost of living crisis that is also affecting us around the world», explained Dr. Marina Romanello, the executive director of the Lancet countdown at the report’s global launch event.
«For seven years, the lancet countdown has been producing annual iterations of over fourteen dedicated monitoring the health impacts of climate change, but especially the health opportunities that would come with accelerated climate action. This year’s report is the product of the work of ninety-nine authors who have worked tirelessly to put the results together».
Life-threatening extreme weather events are becoming more frequent
Recent extreme weather events have wreaked havoc worldwide, bringing further pressure on healthcare systems burdened by the pandemic.
The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown looks at how climate change affects people’s health and intensifies existing threats to livelihoods, essential services, and food and water security.
Climate change and heatwaves: connected phenomena
Climate change is fueling a rise in average global temperatures with heat waves that are more frequent, intense, and lengthier. During the summer of 2021, humans were exposed to average temperatures of zero-point-six degrees Celsius higher than the average registered between 1986 and 2005.
Higher temperatures and harsher heat waves have a detrimental effect on human health. Exposure to extreme heat is linked to many health issues, from heat strokes to worsened sleep patterns and adverse pregnancy outcomes to acute kidney injury. These exposures can affect people’s mental health and impact pre-existing cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
«We’re also seeing increased heat-related mortality: we estimate a 68% increase since the early 2000s, and heat-related mortality is just the tip of the iceberg. Along with it comes an increase in morbidity and all the negative health outcomes from heat exposure».
Wildfires: the threat goes beyond thermal injuries
The impact of extreme weather events goes beyond direct injuries: they impact sanitation and service provision, cause loss of assets and infrastructure, and displacement. Wildfires have an immediate effect on health in the form of thermal injuries and the consequences of exposure to wildfire smoke, and it causes loss of infrastructure. These issues are becoming more common, as compared with the years between 2001 and 2004, now, all around the world, people experienced nine more days of very-high or extremely-high meteorological wildfire danger on average.
Droughts are now a more widespread issue
Like wildfires, the incidence of drought is rising as, according to the report, on average, between 2012 and 2021, extreme drought affected 29 percent more of the global land area compared with the period between 1951 and 1960. Like wildfires and heat waves, droughts impact human health in various ways. They threaten sanitation, food livelihoods, and water security and influence infectious disease transmission.
A public health concern: the impact of climate change on the transmission of infectious
The distribution and transmission of many infectious diseases are changing because of climate change and its consequences. This applies to foodborne, waterborne, and vector-borne diseases. The report shows that the climatic suitability for the transmission of dengue, one of the most common vector-borne diseases, increased from 1951–60 to 2012–21 by eleven-point-five percent for the Yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) and twelve percent for the Tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus). Since between 2003 and 2005, three-point-five percent more of the global coastal waters have become suitable for the transmission of cholera, a disease that kills 95 000 people each year.
How far are we with adaptation measures?
The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change tracks risk and vulnerability assessments and adaptation plans, the progress in the implementation of health adaptation measures, the financing of such efforts, and the effectiveness of health system strengthening in modifying climate-related health risks.
In 2021, fifty-one percent of the countries reported completing a climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessment, which resulted in resource allocation in nine out of ninety-five.
Fifty-two percent of the nations had a national health and climate change plan in place in the same year. Sixty-three percent of the countries had high to very high implementation status for health emergency management in 2021.
Less than forty percent of countries had climate-informed health surveillance systems for airborne, vector-borne, and waterborne diseases.
The low average global exposure to urban green space
Despite the benefits and nature-based solutions and urban green spaces, since 2015, the average global exposure to urban green space has stayed low, and twenty-seven percent of urban centers were classified as moderately green or more in 2021.
In 2021, 149.6 million people lived less than 1 meter above the current sea level in regions facing growing sea-level-rising-related threats. Coastal populations face unique threats posed by climate change, which include the risk of flooding, infectious diseases, and inundation. Without proper adaptation, these populations may be facing relocations.
The report found that health adaptation funding remains inadequate and is, for the most part, not informed by vulnerability and adaptation assessments.
A fossil fuel addiction
To limit global warming to one-point-five degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, emissions should decrease by forty-five percent from 2010 levels by 2030. However, even if all of the commitments in each country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) were met, emissions in 2030 would still be thirteen-point-seven percent higher than in 2010.
Since the adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the global energy system’s carbon intensity has decreased by less than one percent, with energy-related emissions hitting a record high in 2021 and fossil fuel-derived CO2 emissions rising again by six percent in 2021 after the 2020 decrease. Since 2000, agricultural GHG emissions have increased by thirty-one percent.
Inequities between rural and urban populations
In terms of global household energy, fossil fuels make up twenty-six percent of the total, affecting air pollution. From the report, inequities between rural and urban populations emerge, with forty-eight percent of rural people having access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking. In contrast, the majority of the global urban population does.
«For the first time this year, we’re also estimating what is the result of this dirty fuel use in people’s homes. And we’re seeing that in the 62 countries that we analyzed, the air that people breathe in their houses exceeds the WHO-recommended levels of PM2.5 air pollution by 30 times. This is the consequence of not adopting clean renewables: people are breathing toxic air in their homes». Said Dr. Romanello at the event.
Energy poverty – exacerbating the morbidity and mortality
«Obviously, now with the cost of living crisis and with the energy crisis, people are struggling more and more to afford clean fuels in their homes. What we’re seeing is an acute risk of an increased energy insecurity globally, and that has big health impacts. Air pollution is just one of them. Energy poverty, or the effects that it has on the socio-economic determinants of health affects us too. People are being exposed to rising energy prices, too volatile fossil fuel markets. So we’re seeing impacts from climate change, we’re seeing impacts from the direct use of dirty fuels,and all of that, of course, is starting to exacerbate the morbidity and mortality associated with this hazard, putting extra pressure on our health systems».
While total clean energy generation remains insufficient, it reached record levels in 2020. In the same years, investment in global energy supply increased by fourteen percent between 2020 and 2021, and zero-carbon sources accounted for more than eighty percent of investment in electricity generation in 2021. The use of fossil fuels in road transport lessened by zero-point-eight percent in 2019, and that of electricity increased by fifteen-point-seven percent.
The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change
A collaboration published annually that tracks the health profile of climate change and the delivery of commitments made through the Paris Agreement.
