2026 report visual summary
Ten years after the Paris Agreement entered into force to tackle climate change, the evidence is clear: Climate action has delivered real health gains, but far too slowly and unevenly to match the threat of growing health impacts. Protecting a healthy future demands a strong health-centred response.
Chapter 01 Escalating health threats
Findings in this report show that, since the Paris Agreement entered into force in 2016, people have experienced not only increasing climate change-related health impacts and risks, but often an acceleration compared with the previous decade.
In 2023, heat was associated with an estimated 710,000 deaths globally – a record high.
For the first time, the report reveals that human-caused climate change is behind more than 70% of this toll.
The area affected by extreme drought has grown more than 700% faster than it did in 2006–2015.
Between 1981–90 and 2016–25, the annual average transmission suitability of dengue by Aedes albopictus and Ae. aegypti mosquitoes increased by 24.39% and 7.39%, respectively.
Globally, heat exposure caused the loss of 573 billion potential work hours in 2025, resulting in US$ 1.07 trillion in income losses.
These losses are often felt hardest in countries that contributed least to causing climate change.
Chapter 02 Climate action delivers health gains
Though insufficient to tackle the scale of health impacts already being felt, important action is already being delivered.
A quarter (56 of 194) of WHO member states now have a national plan for adapting health services to climate change, up from just 14 in 2015, and 47 have separately completed a vulnerability assessment to underpin plans.
Clean energy employment grew 2.3% in 2024, reaching almost twice the direct fossil fuel employment, and providing healthier job opportunities.
Even though deaths from fossil fuel-related air pollution has remained unchanged since 2016, cleaner air is already preventing an estimated 323,000 deaths a year in 70 countries where air pollution from fossil fuels has fallen.
National laws referencing both climate change and health have risen roughly 50-fold since 2000, most of that since 2016.
Very High HDI countries accounted for 55% (472/857) of climate–health laws as of 2025, compared to 2% (21/857) in Low HDI countries.
Chapter 03 Progress is being held back
The report warns that the fossil fuel industry, weak global cooperation, funding shortfalls and disinformation are backtracking on progress and compounding health threats.
The world's 100 largest oil and gas companies are now planning to produce 150% more fossil fuels by 2040 than is compatible with keeping warming to 1.5°C, up from 138% a year earlier.
48 of 79 UNFCCC-classified ‘developing’ countries have costed their climate adaptation plans to a sum of US$3.3 billion a year just to protect health from climate change. Yet only around a third of the needed funds, US$1.1 billion, arrived in 2024.
Fossil fuels supply 80.7% of global energy, and despite a surge in the electricity share from modern renewables from 5.5% in 2016 to 13.5% in 2023, rising energy demand pushed energy-related GHG emissions to a record-high in 2024.
Chapter 04 A health-centred response
Evidence in this report informs urgent priorities to change course and protect the health and survival of present and future generations.
Recognise, prepare for, and respond to the health emergencies of climate change through established WHO and broader UN mechanisms, and develop a new WHO instrument to formally recognise and address climate change as a global health emergency. Utilise the WHO Emergency Response Framework, the International Health Regulations and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee instruments to recognise, prevent, prepare for, and respond to the health and broader impacts of health emergencies driven by climate change, including by grading climate change-related emergency events and coordinating a cross-sectoral response that aligns surveillance and early warning systems with anticipatory action, health system preparedness, rapid and effective response that safeguards health systems and resource mobilisation. In addition, respond to the scientific evidence, including within this report, demonstrating that climate change is increasingly fuelling health emergencies, and that addressing their root cause requires coordinated, multisectoral and international mitigation and adaptation actions. To do so, establish a new WHO instrument to formally recognise and address climate change as a global health emergency with multiple linked impacts, enabling a coordinated international response that enables sustained anticipatory and preventative action, cross-sectoral and coordinated emergency management, and sustained resource mobilisation.
Align global governance and international systems around climate change and health as a top priority, and optimise the deployment of international resources to address it. Addressing climate change-related health risks requires coordinated and urgent adaptation and mitigation responses across sectors. Countries have the opportunity to build on the UN80 Initiative and the upcoming post-2030 agenda to deliver a new international governance architecture that enables and prioritises a coordinated, cross-sectoral, international response to climate change and health, thereby optimising the use of resources, maximising cost savings, breaking down silos, and ensuring that interventions deliver mutually reinforcing benefits across all sectors.
Prioritise and promote the urgent, just, and equitable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions as a global health imperative. Develop global and national roadmaps to deliver a just and healthy reduction of GHG emissions, including through a just transition away from polluting fuels (biomass and fossil fuels). Ensure these roadmaps account for, quantify, and maximise the health benefits from reduced air pollution, improved access to safe reliable and affordable energy, healthier diets, improved equity and more active lifestyles, while avoiding the health harms from extractive industries and overreliance on technologies which perpetuate the use of fossil fuels or introduce new health harms. Engage health professionals and organisations in the design and implementation of these roadmaps.
Put health at the centre of climate action by placing present and future mortality reduction, health and wellbeing as core objectives and key measures of success across all climate action. Do this by integrating health outcomes into the target-setting, monitoring and evaluation of climate change interventions across UN programmes, the post-2030 agenda, and national policies, including climate finance allocation, and the planning, monitoring and implementation of climate action across sectors. This will help ensure that climate policies deliver and maximise their potential benefits for people and the planet on which their health depends, while identifying and avoiding unintended health harms from the transition.
Establish a global climate change and health data commons as critical public infrastructure and a global public good. The commons would improve the availability, interoperability, and integration of climate and health data disaggregated by relevant population groups and at high temporal and geographical resolution. This would support the development of climate change and health surveillance and health early warning systems; facilitate knowledge sharing to strengthen countries’ capacity to collect, manage, and share data; and help bridge critical data gaps. By providing a shared evidence base, the commons would strengthen the ability of countries to develop cohesive, effective, and evidence-informed responses that protect health from the impacts of climate change.
Increase the provision of grant-based and highly concessional finance for climate change and health interventions, including by meeting international obligations including Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement and the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change to support equitable climate action that protects and promotes health. Such finance is needed at a scale sufficient to enable implementation of adaptation and mitigation actions without exacerbating debt burdens through additional borrowing and interest repayments. Strengthening the availability of accessible, predictable, and equitable finance is essential to addressing the shared risks of climate change, reducing global inequities, and protecting the health and wellbeing of people in all countries.
The evidence points to action
The 2026 report brings together the evidence needed to put health at the centre of climate action and decision-making.
Source: The 2026 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change.
