Government Engagement

This indicator tracks government engagement in health and climate change in two key forums. It tracks mentions of climate change and health in statements made by national leaders at the United Nations General Debate, which is part of the annual United Nations General Assembly, as a proxy of high-level political engagement on these two topics as separate and related issues. It also tracks reference to health and climate change, as well as their prominence, in the text of all available Nationally Determined Contributions by Parties to the Paris Agreement (as of January 1st 2026).

The results present a somewhat conservative estimate of high-level political engagement with the intersection of climate change and health. There may be examples of governments referring to climate change and health but not the direct linkages between the two and there may be examples of governments discussing the health impacts of climate change in their United Nations General Debate speeches but the distance between the climate change term and the health term exceeds 25 words. The analyses are based on a narrow range of search terms, which excludes reference to many of indirect links between climate change and health. NDC: Updates to NDCs and entirely new submissions are analysed as iterative versions without distinction. While the nature of updates may differ from new NDCs, this distinction does not affect the importance assigned to health within both types of documents.