2019 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change Includes Rollins Contributions

Yang Liu, associate professor in environmental health, at the Emory Rollins School of Public Health, was a contributor on “The 2019 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change,” released this month by The Lancet. The Countdown project is an international collaboration that brings together leading climate scientists, engineers, economists, political scientists, public health professionals, and public health researchers to “track the relationship between health and climate change across five key domains and 41 indicators.”  

Key messages from this year’s report include:

• The life of every child born today will be profoundly affected by climate change.
• A second path, which limits the global average temperature rise to below 2°Celsius is possible and could transform lives.
• An unprecedented change in climate requires an unprecedented response.

Emory’s specific contributions included adding direct population exposure to wildfires as a new indicator beneath the heading, “Climate change impacts, exposures, and vulnerability.” As noted in the report, “152 of 196 countries saw an increase in annual daily population exposures in wildfires in 2015-2018, compared with in 2001-2004, with India alone experiencing an increase of 21 million annual daily exposures.” 

The Lancet has published this report annually since 2015. 

To view the report in full, visit http://www.lancetcountdown.org/2019-report/.