A group of leading international experts has a modest proposal for the World Health Organization: declare the climate crisis a global public health emergency, before millions more people die unnecessarily. The independent pan-European commission on climate and health, convened by the WHO itself, concluded that the climate crisis is such a worldwide threat to health that the WHO should declare it “a public health emergency of international concern” (Pheic).
The commission's report, which will be presented to European ministers on Sunday before the WHO's world health assembly starts on Monday, argues that the international spread of vector-borne diseases like dengue and chikungunya, along with the health impacts of extreme weather events, global heating, food insecurity, and air pollution, make a Pheic necessary. Pheics are the highest level of health alert, previously reserved for infectious diseases such as Covid and Mpox. While declaring one won't single-handedly reverse climate change, it would trigger the kind of coordinated international response that the scale of the health crisis demands but has so far failed to materialize.
Katrín Jakobsdóttir, a former prime minister of Iceland who chaired the commission, told the Guardian: "The climate crisis may not be a pandemic, but it's still a public health emergency that threatens humanity's very health and survival. And if we don't act more quickly and comprehensively, many millions more people could die or face life-changing illness." Sir Andrew Haines, a professor of environmental change and public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the commission's chief scientific adviser, noted that the WHO has already recognized climate change as a major threat to global health, but added: "What we're asking for is a step further."
The commission also urged governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, which are directly responsible for 600,000 premature deaths a year in Europe alone. The region spends about €444bn (£387bn) a year on subsidies for oil and gas production, the report said. In 12 European countries, fossil fuel subsidies exceeded 10% of national health expenditure in 2023, and in four countries they exceeded the entire health budget. "This is not a sustainable energy policy. It's really more of a public health failure," Jakobsdóttir said, adding that new subsidies and redrilling in the wake of the Iran crisis would be "catastrophic for health."
The report also called for measures to tackle disinformation, greater use of national climate health impact assessments, and recognition that climate change is also a mental health crisis. Jakobsdóttir offered a simple strategy: "Make it personal. Climate change is not happening somewhere else, to someone else, in the future. It is shortening lives in European cities right now. It is filling hospitals. It is driving anxiety and stress and other mental health issues."
Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO's regional director for Europe, responded by noting that conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown what fossil fuel dependency really means: "not just higher bills, but strained or broken health systems, disrupted food and fuel supplies and societies under pressure." He committed to treating climate change as the health emergency it is across the 53 member states of the WHO European region. Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, welcomed the report, pointing to "multiple planetary boundaries" being breached as ample scientific evidence for the declaration.