Heat-related deaths per 100,000 inhabitants have increased by 23% since the 1990s.

Ana Tuñas Matilla

Fifteen of the world's largest emitters spend more money subsidizing fossil fuels than their health budgets, while climate change is claiming 23% more lives per 100,000 people each year than in the 1990s, according to The Lancet Countdown report, which warns that the impact of the climate crisis on health has reached record levels.

The study, led by University College London and developed in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) , brings together the work of 128 experts from 71 academic institutions and United Nations agencies.

Published in the lead-up to the UN Climate Summit to be held in the Brazilian city of Belém (COP30), it extensively assesses the connections between climate crisis and health, including new metrics on deaths from extreme heat and forest fire smoke , coverage of urban blue spaces (rivers, lakes and coasts) or funding for health adaptation.

In its ninth edition, it highlights that over-reliance on fossil fuels and the inability to adapt to climate change are costing people their lives, health and livelihoods , and that 13 of the 20 indicators that track health threats have worsened.

Nearly 1 trillion dollars

Among the data it presents, it shows that in 2023, 15 of the 87 countries responsible for 93% of global CO2 emissions spent more on net subsidies for fossil fuels (coal, oil or gas) than they allocated to their national health budgets.

These are Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Libya, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.

In a context of excessive and continued dependence on fossil fuels, as prices skyrocketed, the world's governments spent a total of $956 billion on net subsidies in 2023 .

Meanwhile, the oil and gas giants continue to expand their production plans to a scale three times greater than what a habitable planet can sustain : they exceed by 189% a 2040 production level compatible with the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.

And all this when 2024 was the hottest year on record, with catastrophic consequences for the health, lives and livelihoods of people around the world: every person was exposed to a record 16 days of extreme heat directly attributable to climate change.

Fires: 154,000 deaths due to pollution

According to the new indicator included in the report, heat-related mortality per 100,000 inhabitants has increased by 23% since the 1990s, with an average of 546,000 deaths per year between 2012 and 2021 .

As a rate, it is adjusted for population growth since the 1990s, when the world had approximately 5 billion inhabitants compared to over 8 billion today. Without adjusting for population growth, the absolute increase in heat-related deaths is 63% since the 1990s, report authors explained to EFEverde.

The warmer, drier conditions also fueled wildfires , whose fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution caused a record 154,000 deaths in 2024.

In addition, droughts and heat waves increased the number of people suffering from moderate or severe food insecurity by 123 million in 2023 , compared to the annual average between 1981 and 2010.

According to the same source, air pollution associated with the use of fossil fuels causes about 2.5 million deaths per year, while in countries where households do not have access to clean energy for, for example, cooking or heating, another 2.3 million people die.

On the other hand, the average global transmission potential of dengue fever (a disease transmitted by a mosquito whose spread is increasing with climate change) has increased by 49% since the 1950s. Between January and April of last year alone, 7.6 million cases were recorded.

On the positive side

On the other hand, and although some governments are backtracking on their climate commitments, the report reflects the impact of measures that are saving lives.

For example, it is estimated that 160,000 lives are saved each year thanks to the abandonment of coal and the resulting improvement in air quality, while renewable energy generation reached record levels.

Furthermore, it reveals the emerging leadership of local governments, communities, organizations and the health sector , and calls for everyone's participation to accelerate and intensify efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while simultaneously adapting to climate change.

Thus, a growing number of cities (834 out of 858 surveyed in 2024) have completed or intend to complete climate change-related risk assessments, according to the CDP (the world's largest voluntary reporting system on climate change progress).

The healthcare sector itself has demonstrated leadership on climate-related issues, reducing its emissions by 16% between 2021 and 2022. Nearly two-thirds of medical students worldwide received climate and health education in 2024, fostering the capacity to continue making progress.

According to the same source, this is an aspect that increasingly worries the population: between 2023 and 2024, Google searches related to climate and health have increased by 21%.

There is an urgent need to curb fossil fuels

The destruction of lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate until we end our addiction to fossil fuels and drastically improve our efforts to adapt, warned Marina Romanello, director of Lancet Countdown at University College London.

Tools already exist to do this, such as clean energy or nature-based measures to adapt cities to the new climate reality , which, together with abandoning oil, coal and gas, halting deforestation and more sustainable agricultural systems, could save more than ten million lives a year, he added.

In Spain alone, last year people were exposed to an average of 16.7 days of heat waves, of which 15.1 (90%) would not have occurred without climate change. Between 2012 and 2021, the country recorded an annual average of 5,800 heat-related deaths, more than double the number recorded between 1990 and 1999.

Between 2020 and 2024, there was an average of 55 days per year with a high risk of forest fires (6% more than in 2003-2012), and PM2.5 particles from forest fires were responsible for an average of 1,008 deaths per year.

Between 2020 and 2024, 61% of Spanish territory experienced at least one month of extreme drought per year, almost six times more than the 1951-1960 average, and between 2022-2024, the sea surface temperature was 0.83 °C higher than the 1981-2010 average.

Spain had negative net carbon revenues in 2023, indicating that fossil fuel subsidies (which totaled 6.81 billion) were higher than carbon prices.

Between 2016 and 2022, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion fell by 9%. In 2022, coal accounted for 3.1% of total energy consumption, while renewables accounted for 8.4%. In households, 45% of energy came from electricity, while in road transport, fossil fuels accounted for 95% of energy consumption, compared to just 0.2% for electricity.

In 2022, more than 22,000 deaths in Spain were attributable to anthropogenic air pollution (PM2.5). Fossil fuels (coal and liquefied gas) contributed to 44% of these deaths; 46% came from gasoline use in transportation, and more than 550 deaths were still due to coal burning.

atm/mnc