Attachments
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) works with vulnerable and marginalized communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change despite being the least responsible for the emissions that are generating the climate crisis.
In response, our teams are engaged in developing environmentally-informed health and humanitarian interventions across six focus areas: mitigating carbon footprints, filling research gaps, enhancing early warning systems and partnerships, assessing vulnerability and risk, improving disease surveillance, and building adaptable programs for climate impacts. Each area is interdependent, meaning failure to address one not only impedes progress on that specific component but also affects an entire sequence of subsequent actions.
This 2024 joint brief draws on evidence from indicators in the 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change to present examples of how climate change and environmental degradation are making provision of assistance more difficult by amplifying health and humanitarian needs and by further complicating interventions. The brief also highlights activities that respond to the climate crisis using a three-pillar approach:
- mitigating MSF’s environmental footprint
- adapting health care delivery and emergency response to the current and future realities of climate change
- advocating for those impacted