Concerted climate action is needed NOW
In the coming decades, growing exposure and vulnerability to heatwaves and other extreme weather events will lead to more suffering, ill health and deaths unless countries take truly drastic adaptation and mitigation measures to tackle climate change.
- Adaptation means making our health systems and our societies fit to face the future with a changing climate. WHO/Europe issues technical guidance to support national and local authorities in essential preparation for extreme weather events.
- Mitigation means going beyond preparing for the impacts of climate change to being part of the solution. Our health systems and societies need to be climate-resilient, sustainable and low-carbon. We can do our part by ensuring that climate change is fully integrated, internalized and institutionalized into our health systems, accelerating the delivery of net-zero, sustainable health care to improve individual, societal and planetary health.
WHO European Member States have already demonstrated that they can work together effectively on urgent threats to global health. The outcome of the 7th Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health and its Budapest Declaration define the future environment and health priorities and commitments for the Region to 2030 and beyond, with a focus on addressing the health dimensions of the triple environmental crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution.