The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: health at the mercy of fossil fuels

The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: health at the mercy of fossil fuels

Marina Romanello1, Claudia Di Napoli2, Paul Drummond3, Carole Green4, Harry Kennard5 et al.

1 Institute for Global Health, University College London, London, UK

2 School of Agriculture Policy and Development, University of Reading, Reading, UK

3 Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London, London, UK

4 Department of Global Health, Centre for Health and the Global Environment, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

5 UCL Energy Institute, University College London, London, UK

fields 2745230

The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown is published as the world confronts profound and concurrent systemic shocks. Countries and health systems continue to contend with the health, social, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a persistent fossil fuel overdependence has pushed the world into global energy and cost-of-living crises. As these crises unfold, climate change escalates unabated. Its worsening impacts are increasingly affecting the foundations of human health and wellbeing, exacerbating the vulnerability of the world's population to concurrent health threats.

Through multiple and interconnected pathways, every dimension of food security is being affected by climate change, aggravating the impacts of other coexisting crises. New analysis suggests that extreme heat was associated with 98 million more people reporting moderate to severe food insecurity in 2020 than annually in 1981-2020, in 103 countries analysed. The increasingly extreme weather worsens the stability of global food systems, acting in synergy with other concurrent crises to reverse progress towards hunger eradication.

 

 

Publication details

Marina Romanello, Claudia Di Napoli, Paul Drummond, Carole Green, Harry Kennard, Pete Lampard, Daniel Scamman, Nigel Arnell, Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, Lea Berrang Ford, Kristine Belesova, Kathryn Bowen, Wenjia Cai, Max Callaghan, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Jonathan Chambers, Kim R van Daalen, Carole Dalin, Niheer Dasandi, Shouro Dasgupta, Michael Davies, Paula Dominguez-Salas, Robert Dubrow, Kristie L Ebi, Matthew Eckelman, Paul Ekins, Luis E Escobar, Lucien Georgeson, Hilary Graham, Samuel H Gunther, Ian Hamilton, Yun Hang, Risto Hänninen, Stella Hartinger, Kehan He, Jeremy J Hess, Shih-Che Hsu, Slava Jankin, Louis Jamart, Ollie Jay, Ilan Kelman, Gregor Kiesewetter, Patrick Kinney, Tord Kjellstrom, Dominic Kniveton, Jason K W Lee, Bruno Lemke, Yang Liu, Zhao Liu, Melissa Lott, Martin Lotto Batista, Rachel Lowe, Frances MacGuire, Maquins Odhiambo Sewe, Jaime Martinez-Urtaza, Mark Maslin, Lucy McAllister, Alice McGushin, Celia McMichael, Zhifu Mi, James Milner, Kelton Minor, Jan C Minx, Nahid Mohajeri, Maziar Moradi-Lakeh, Karyn Morrissey, Simon Munzert, Kris A Murray, Tara Neville, Maria Nilsson, Nick Obradovich, Megan B O'Hare, Tadj Oreszczyn, Matthias Otto, Fereidoon Owfi, Olivia Pearman, Mahnaz Rabbaniha, Elizabeth J Z Robinson, Joacim Rocklöv, Renee N Salas, Jan C Semenza, Jodi D Sherman, Liuhua Shi, Joy Shumake-Guillemot, Grant Silbert, Mikhail Sofiev, Marco Springmann, Jennifer Stowell, Meisam Tabatabaei, Jonathon Taylor, Joaquin Triñanes, Fabian Wagner, Paul Wilkinson, Matthew Winning, Marisol Yglesias-González, Shihui Zhang, Peng Gong, Hugh Montgomery, Anthony Costello, The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: health at the mercy of fossil fuels, The Lancet, Volume 400, Issue 10363, 2022, Pages 1619-1654, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01540-9.