5.6Active indicatorCorporate Sector Engagement in Health and Climate Change

Indicator 5.6 · Engagement

Corporate Sector Engagement in Health and Climate Change

Companies can shape climate change and health through their own operations, greenhouse gas emissions, and wider influence on policy and markets. The United Nations Global Compact is the world’s largest voluntary corporate sustainability initiative, and participating companies are required to report publicly each year on their progress. This indicator tracks the extent to which participating healthcare companies recognise and report on the health dimensions of climate change.

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Headline finding

In 2025, only 37% of healthcare companies referred to the health dimensions of climate change in their UN Global Compact reports, down from 58% in 2023 but still above 15% in 2016.

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Figure 1

Corporate sector engagement with health and climate change

This chart shows engagement with health and climate change in company reports from 2016 to 2025, for the world and by HDI group, WHO region and Lancet Countdown region. It opens on two panels on independent scales for the world: the supplied Companies (N) series above, and the three topic proportions — reports referencing climate change, health or their intersection — sharing a single percentage panel below. The published figure combines them on a dual axis, which the platform does not use because two free scales can imply a relationship the data does not support. The Companies (N) series is supplied for the world only, so the paired view draws the world; the Show control can instead present one metric at a time for the world and by HDI group, WHO region and Lancet Countdown region: the number of reports referencing a topic, or the proportion of reports doing so; on the count reading the Companies (N) series rides the chart as its own reference line. The number of reports is supplied for the global series only; regional and group series are supplied as proportions. The Ranking view orders WHO regions, HDI groups or Lancet Countdown regions by the proportion for a chosen year.

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Figure 2

Country-level corporate engagement

This map shows, for each country, the number or proportion of company reports referencing climate change, health or their intersection. The same data is available as a country ranking.

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Figure 3

Corporate engagement by company sector

This chart compares company sectors in 2025, the one year the sector breakdown covers. The grouped bars show, for each chosen sector, the number or proportion of reports referencing climate change, health and their intersection as three side-by-side bars — a report can reference more than one topic, so the bars are never stacked or summed. The Ranking view orders all sectors by a chosen topic and metric.

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About this indicator

Description

This indicator monitors engagement on health and climate change from the over 25,000 companies from 167 countries who signed up to the UNGC by tracking mentions of health and climate change in their annual Global Compact Communication of Progress (GCCOP) reports. This indicator uses natural language processing to perform a keyword-in-context search across 12,010 GCCoP reports between 2016 and 2025, in 36 different languages.

Authors

Dr Hannah Bechara, Krishnamoorthy Manohara

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Caveats

This analysis is based on a narrow range of search terms, which excludes reference to many of indirect links between climate change and health, such as the effect of climate change on agriculture. Therefore, the results present a somewhat conservative estimate of high corporate engagement with the intersection of climate change and health.

Data sources

  1. Communication on Progress (CoP) portal, 2024. United Nations Global Compact.