Doctors urge businesses to consider health benefits of climate action

The economic case for taking action to curb carbon emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change can be significantly strengthened if business leaders and policy makers properly account for the health benefits associated with the shift to a low-carbon economy.

That is the conclusion of a major series of reports published in the Lancet yesterday, which argue that there are numerous health benefits to be attained from investing in low-carbon and clean technologies.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Dr Paul Wilkinson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and one of the report authors, said that politicians, economists and business leaders had been guilty of failing to adequately account for the health benefits that would be delivered through the transition to a low-carbon economy.

"We think there has been insufficient consideration of the matter of health costs," he said. "A lot of people tend to say that mitigation measures are costly, but they are almost always beneficial from a health perspective and those benefits should be included [in economic modelling]. If you include the health and environmental benefits, the mitigation measures look even more attractive."

The series of reports assessed a wide range of potential health benefits in the developing and developed world, concluding that low-carbon policies such as improving the energy efficiency of buildings, replacing fossil fuels with cleaner sources of energy and encouraging people to cycle or walk could avert up to 5,500 premature deaths in a country such as the UK.

The reports also argued that benefits could be even more pronounced in developing countries, where replacing cooking stoves with low-emission versions in places such as India has the potential to avoid more than 240,000 premature deaths among children and 18 million premature adult deaths.

Wilkinson said that it was difficult to put a precise financial value on such measures, but insisted that they had a clear economic benefit. "Our studies only really focused on the health benefits, but it is clear that most mitigation efforts deliver health benefits and you can attach to that in terms of reduced health costs, and that can be set against the economic costs of low-carbon measures."

The research was welcomed by UK health secretary Andy Burnham, who urged health ministers and professionals around the world to better assess the impact of climate change on health.

"Climate change can seem a distant, impersonal threat – in fact, the associated costs to health are a very real and present danger," he said. " Health ministers across the globe must act now to highlight the risk global warming poses to our communities. We need well-designed climate change policies that drive health benefits."

The latest research builds on a Lancet study released earlier this year, which warned that climate change represented the biggest threat to global health this century. The study warned that the increased incidence of heat waves, drought and extreme weather events coupled with changing disease migration patterns could put the health of billions of people at risk.