Declaration of Climate Change as a Health Emergency

The climate emergency is a health emergency: A call for urgent action

We, the undersigned health professionals, researchers, educators and students,
bear witness through our patients and research to the harms that climate change is
causing. Our position of trust carries a responsibility to speak out and act.
Heatwaves, floods, wildfires, storms, changing patterns of infectious diseases and
food insecurity are causing alarming levels of illness, death and displacement.
Countries in the Global South are least responsible, but suffer most.

There can be no European or Global security without health security.
Activating WHO and European Union health emergency mechanisms could help
catalyse a coordinated, equitable response to climate change, mobilising attention,
financing and collaboration, while placing health concerns at the forefront of national
and global climate policy.

We thus call on the Minister for Health to:

1. Use Ireland’s EU Presidency conference on 23 November and its conclusions
to invite European colleagues to declare climate change a health emergency,
and to provide reports on progress during each successive EU Presidency.
2. Ask the European Commission to assess the case for activating the EU’s
formal health emergency mechanisms.
3. Join other countries in requesting WHO to declare climate change a Public
Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and offer to help finance
the response in the Global South.

The health sector response to climate change must protect those facing the greatest
harm, in Europe and beyond, and turn recognition of the emergency into lasting
improvements in health and wellbeing.

We call for urgent action and offer our support for these initiatives, so together we
leave a legacy of a just, healthier world for future generations.