SYDNEY, Nov. 6 — Experts have called for climate change to be declared a global health emergency, warning that its impacts on human health are accelerating worldwide, according to a global report involving researchers in Australia.
The 2026 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change found that many climate-related health risks grew faster in the decade following the 2015 Paris Agreement than in the previous decade, according to a statement released Friday by the University of Sydney.
Heat was associated with an estimated average of 540,800 deaths per year between 2016 and 2023, with climate change estimated to be responsible for about 68 percent of those deaths, according to the report, produced by 146 researchers from 71 institutions, including seven researchers from the University of Sydney.
In 2023, the hottest year in the period, heat was linked to a record 710,000 deaths globally, with more than 70 percent attributable to human-caused climate change, said the report, led by University College London in strategic collaboration with the World Health Organization.
The report also found that heat exposure resulted in an estimated 573 billion potential work hours lost in 2025 and 1.07 trillion U.S. dollars in potential income losses.
While global clean energy investment reached a record 2.1 trillion dollars in 2025, fossil fuels continued to supply more than 80 percent of the world’s energy, with pollution from fossil fuels linked to an estimated 2.73 million deaths annually, it said.(Namibia Daily News/Xinhua)
