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The 2026 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: a decade of escalating health harms and a decisive moment for all

The Lancet

The tenth Lancet Countdown report, tracking 54 indicators of climate change and health, and calling for climate change to be treated as a global health emergency. Published in The Lancet, 2026.

The 2026 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change

The Lancet

October 2026 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(26)01779-4

Romanello, M., Walawender, M., Israelsson, J., … Roa-Contreras, J.A., … Costello, A.

Photo: Pexels

The Approach

The tenth Lancet Countdown indicator report, written by 146 experts from 71 institutions, tracks 54 indicators, four of them new this year. It compares the last decade of climate change and health against the one before it, and asks who has benefited from climate action since the Paris Agreement.

What We Found

710K Deaths linked to heat worldwide 2023, a record

~36% Rise in average annual heat-related deaths vs. the previous decade

$2.1T Global clean energy investment 2025, a record

Health harms grew faster over the past decade than in the one before it. Climate action is delivering measurable health gains, through clean energy, health system readiness and health-protecting law, but the gains are not reaching everyone and are too small to offset the harm from fossil-fuel-driven climate change.

My Contribution

I contributed to Section 5: Public and Political Engagement, which tracks how media, the public, scientists, governments, international organisations, lawmakers and companies respond to climate change and health. Public and scientific interest is growing: searches reached a record 58.1, six times the 2016 level, and articles rose 167% since 2016. Political and corporate attention is retreating: states raising the link at the UN General Debate fell from 65.9% in 2021 to 26.3% in 2025, and company reports from 57.7% to 37.1%. I also built the web scrapers that collected X posts from international organisations, the data behind the international-organisations indicator.

Scientific publications on health and climate change by Human Development Index (HDI) group, 2006–25. Figure 15 of the 2026 Lancet Countdown report.

Why It Matters

The report calls for climate change to be recognized and addressed as a global health emergency, with responses that are equitable and grounded in evidence. Engagement is higher than in 2016, but attention from governments and companies has slipped over the past two years.

Read the paperDOI

Cite This Work

Cite this work

Romanello, M., Walawender, M., Israelsson, J., et al. (2026). The 2026 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: a decade of escalating health harms and a decisive moment for all. The Lancet. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(26)01779-4

@article{romanello2026lancet,
  author  = {Romanello, M. and Walawender, M. and Israelsson, J. and others},
  title   = {The 2026 {Report} of the {Lancet} {Countdown} on Health and
    Climate Change: A Decade of Escalating Health Harms and a Decisive
    Moment for All},
  journal = {The Lancet},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.1016/S0140-6736(26)01779-4},
  url     = {https://jorgeroac.com/publications/papers/peer-reviewed/lancet-countdown-2026/}
}

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One of the contributing authors: Roa-Contreras, J.A.