The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate, is a report that was established to provide an independent, global monitoring system dedicated to tracking the health dimensions of the impacts of, and the response to, climate change.
The Lancet Countdown’s 2018 report tracks 41 indicators across five key domains in health and climate change, continuously strengthening its methods, data and analysis. It arrives at three key conclusions:
- IMPACT: Present day changes in heat waves, labor capacity, vector-borne disease, and food security provide early warning of compounded and overwhelming impacts expected if temperature continues to rise.
- DELAY: A lack of progress in reducing emissions and building adaptive capacity threatens both human lives and the viability of the national health systems they depend on, with the potential to disrupt core public health infrastructure and overwhelm health services.
- OPPORTUNITY: Despite these delays, trends in a number of sectors see the beginning of a low-carbon transition, and it is clear that the nature and scale of the response to climate change will be the determining factor in shaping the health of nations for centuries to come.
Learn more and read the report.