Every climate action counts: The ripple effect of each failure on health systems in humanitarian settings
Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) works with vulnerable and marginalised communities who are disproportionately affected by climate change despite being the least responsible for the emissions that are generating the climate crisis.
In response, our teams are engaged in developing environmentally-informed health and humanitarian interventions across six focus areas: mitigating carbon footprints, filling research gaps, enhancing early warning systems and partnerships, assessing vulnerability and risk, improving disease surveillance, and building adaptable programmes for climate impacts.
Each area is interdependent, meaning failure to address one not only impedes progress on that specific component but also affects an entire sequence of subsequent actions.
This 2024 joint brief draws on evidence from indicators in the 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change to present examples of how climate change and environmental degradation are making provision of assistance more difficult by amplifying health and humanitarian needs and by further complicating interventions.
The brief also highlights activities that respond to the climate crisis using a three-pillar approach:
- mitigating MSF’s environmental footprint
- adapting healthcare delivery and emergency response to the current and future realities of climate change
- advocating for those impacted
The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change & Médecins Sans Frontières
The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change
The publication of the Lancet-MSF brief is linked to the launch of the 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown, which monitors the changing impacts of climate change on health, and assesses how well governments worldwide are delivering on their climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.
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Related:
- Climate Change
- Climate crisis
