Health and Fiscal Co-benefits of Emissions Reductions: Summary for Negotiators

Brussels — Mitigating climate change presents unrivalled opportunities for improving health and welfare.

Policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will bring about substantial reductions in heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, road deaths and injuries, and air pollution. The health benefits arise because climate policy necessarily impacts on two of the most important determinants of health: human nutrition and human movement. Although the health co-benefits of climate change policies are increasingly recognized by health professionals they are not widely appreciated by those responsible for policy. Because the existence of important health co-benefits will dramatically reduce the cost to society of taking strong action to mitigate climate change, failure to appreciate their importance could have serious environmental consequences.

Read the Health and fiscal co-benefits of emissions reductions: a summary for negotiators (pdf)

Health Care Without Harm is an international coalition of more than 500 organizations in 53 countries, working to transform the health care sector worldwide, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment. Visit the HCWH website for more information.