Loading ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) should declare climate change a “public health emergency of international concern” to recognize the “catastrophic threat” it poses to human health, experts from the Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health (PECCH) have said. 

This is one of the recommendations of the commission’s report, Call to Action, published on May 17 and launched with an event on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly on May 19. The report urges heads of governments, ministers, health authorities, cities, funders, and the WHO to urgently scale up climate and health action in the face of waning attention.

The PECCH is an independent advisory group convened by WHO Europe that brings together 11 commissioners from across the region in response to growing concerns about the effects of climate change on health. 

The European region is the fastest heating region in the world, with temperatures rising twice as fast as the global average. Research has found that almost 70% of the 24,000 estimated heat-related deaths in the summer of 2025 in 854 European cities were attributable to human-induced climate change. 

The commission said that existing frameworks have proven insufficient to trigger coordinated international health preparedness, disease surveillance, and wider responses to climate hazards that the crisis demands, allowing it to be pushed to the sideline.

“Formal recognition would underscore the scale of the threats to health and the imperative for urgent action,” the report said. 

Sir Andrew Haines, professor of environmental change and public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the commission’s chief scientific adviser, told the event that the WHO must recognize that climate change has catastrophic impacts on public health, warranting it to be declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). 

“It doesn’t conform to its usual criteria, but nevertheless the criteria need to be changed to address this burgeoning problem,” he said. 

“Declaring this a PHEIC is something we really want to push for … WHO has an important role to play.” 

A PHEIC is defined in the International Health Regulations as, “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response.”

On May 17, the WHO director-general determined that the Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda constituted a PHEIC. Other previous PHEICs include COVID-19 and mpox. 

Katrín Jakobsdóttir, a former prime minister of Iceland who chairs the commission, told the event that climate change posed an escalating threat to health security. 

“Why are we framing this as a security threat? Because it’s a security issue,” she said, lamenting that resources were being redirected towards defense spending, away from investments in health and education. 

“I think the security framing is important because security is much broader than the normal military. The climate crisis has gone down on the agenda, but the threat is still there … Inaction will cost you a lot more than inaction.” 

The Call to Action provides 17 recommendations. They include that the WHO establish a climate health regional information hub to provide countries with access to trusted resources for evidence-informed policies, advocacy, communications, and myth-busting; for ministries of health, health authorities, and healthcare institutions to embed climate resilience and environmental sustainability capabilities into the education accreditation standards of healthcare professionals; and to transform how care is delivered to promote health, cut emissions, and build climate resilience while enhancing equity, quality, and safety. The report also calls for climate-friendly procurement standards across the region to send a consistent demand signal to suppliers, as well as recognition that climate change is also a mental health crisis.

Iris Blom, MD, PhD, scientific writer for the commission and researcher at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told the event it is crucial that medical education equips students with knowledge on the health impacts of climate change. Currently, only around 1 in 5 European countries with available data explicitly reference climate change or planetary health in health professional education accreditation standards, she said. 

“Healthcare workers are not learning how to deal with climate change. The workforce we train today are the ones who will run health systems for the next 40 years,” she said.

“You shouldn’t have to wait 6 years to learn about what climate change does to patients.” 

The commission also urged governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, which are responsible for more than 600,000 premature deaths a year across the European region. In 2023, the region spent about €444 billion on subsidies for oil and gas production, the report said. 

In the coming months, the commission will present these recommendations to politicians and policymakers in Europe and beyond.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Robb Butler, WHO special representative for climate and health, WHO Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark, told the event. 

“We have to unpack the recommendations and promote them for uptake.” 

Jakobsdóttir added, “I know it’s an uphill discussion, but we have a lot of enthusiastic people pushing the agenda and we will continue.”