The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that scaling up six climate and health measures could save about 1.6 million lives a year and generate trillions of dollars in economic and fiscal benefits, in a report released days before the COP31 climate conference opens in Antalya, Türkiye.
The report, titled “Global benefits and costs of prioritized actions on climate change and health,” is described by WHO as the first comprehensive analysis of the economic and fiscal returns from taking the six measures to scale. Its headline estimate is 1.56 million deaths averted a year, which WHO equates to one in every 40 deaths, based on modeled projections. The measures would also avoid 16.67 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in emissions each year.
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The six measures are heat-health warning systems; climate-resilient safely managed drinking water; climate-resilient basic sanitation; climate-resilient hand hygiene; cleaner household energy sources; and policies that price fossil fuels efficiently, such as phasing out fossil fuel subsidies. WHO said the measures offer a “triple dividend” of healthier people, lower emissions and stronger economies.
The money figures are large. The measures could generate up to $5.4 trillion in fiscal benefits each year, according to the report, along with an economic boost of nearly $4 trillion from saving lives, avoiding disasters and reducing healthcare costs. A separate WHO briefing for COP31 puts the return at around $24 for every dollar invested. One account of the report says that return applies to five of the six measures, which together would avert 1.2 million deaths and deliver about $3 trillion in economic welfare benefits plus the $5.4 trillion in extra tax revenue. The accounts do not reconcile whether the $24 figure covers five measures or all six, and both are reported here.
WHO acknowledged that the study relied on ambitious scenarios and that data gaps and inherent uncertainties shaped the projections.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement that much of the harm the climate crisis causes can be prevented with “tools we already have.” He said scaling up proven, affordable actions could save millions of lives, with the greatest gains in the countries that need them most. He urged leaders heading to Antalya to put the protection of health at the center of climate action. COP31 runs from November 9 to 20, and the briefing WHO prepared for delegates asks governments to move from commitment to implementation of the Belém Health Action Plan, which is supported by the WHO-hosted Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health and by a new Antalya Initiative for Health Resilience.
The report arrives a week after the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, produced by 146 researchers from more than 100 institutions in over 30 countries. That report, led by University College London and developed in collaboration with WHO, tracks 54 indicators linking climate change and health. It found that heat-related deaths, drought and other climate-related risks are rising faster than a decade ago, even as clean energy investments and climate action begin to deliver health benefits. Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, who heads WHO’s climate change and health unit, said the evidence shows that “climate action is a health intervention.”
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The Lancet Countdown also noted advances in climate-resilient health systems, including more national health adaptation plans and climate-informed early warning systems, according to WHO’s summary of the findings. A group of 146 scientists has urged the United Nations to declare climate change a global health emergency ahead of the conference, according to one account of the scientists’ appeal.
WHO’s own priorities for COP31 are laid out in its briefing. It says climate change is already causing measurable harm to health, with impacts that fall unequally on regions and people, and that health systems must become climate-resilient, low-carbon and sustainable. It also asks negotiators to write health into the negotiated text of the conference.
WHO said countries around the world are facing record-breaking climate shocks in 2026, and the report was released ahead of the conference, where governments are expected to share their climate commitments. WHO ranks climate change as the first of six priorities in its current programme of work, according to a July account of a meeting of the Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health, a WHO-hosted network of 106 countries launched at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. Türkiye, which holds the COP31 presidency, told that meeting it plans to attach health more firmly to the conference’s voluntary action agenda, the track that runs alongside the formal negotiations.
The conference opens on November 9 in Antalya.
