The past 2 weeks have seen tremendous leadership from the healthcare community at COP26, the United Nations conference on climate change. The health argument for climate action is growing stronger. In the past 8 years there have been an explosion of academic literature on the intersection between health, climate change and nature loss, with more than 16,000 articles published.
The climate crisis is causing respiratory and cardiovascular deaths from heat waves, increasing the risk of many infectious diseases, affecting access to clean water and affordable nutrition, and is worsening the burden of mental illness. The Paris commitment to aim for less than 1.5 degrees is important because every fraction of a degree of warming will result in the loss of many more lives lost and livelihoods damaged, particularly impacting the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.
The healthcare community is playing its part in addressing this crisis by making net zero commitments within healthcare systems, committing to build climate resilient healthcare systems, and collaborating across sector to ensure that environmental policies include healthy people at their core.
CREATION.co is proud to be working in partnership with GSK, a principal partner at COP26, to gather insights from the healthcare community on this important topic.