An international monitoring project established at the time of the Paris Agreement reported Wednesday that climate-related risks to health are worsening, with more people facing dangerous heat, food insecurity, exposure to pathogens and other threats.
The team of 122 researchers from United Nations agencies and academic institutions worldwide published their findings in The Lancet in advance of climate negotiations scheduled for next month in Azerbaijan. The findings were accompanied by an urgent plea from the authors for stronger action by governments to protect lives.
“This year’s stocktake of the imminent health threats of climate inaction reveals the most concerning findings yet in our eight years of monitoring,” Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown project at University College London, said in a statement. “The relentless expansion of fossil fuels and record-breaking greenhouse gas emissions compounds these dangerous health impacts, and is threatening to reverse the limited progress made so far, and put a healthy future further out of reach.”