Promoting health through climate change mitigation in Europe

Abstract

Several EU climate change mitigation policies have the potential to deliver health co-benefits. However, existing frameworks guiding research in this area lack important details that are needed to understand how evidence of health co-benefits can be used to support the ambition and acceptability of EU climate policy. In this Personal View, we propose an integrated framework for advancing the state-of-the-science on health co-benefits of climate change mitigation and realising the societal effect of evidence documenting co-benefits. We apply this framework to the EU context. Our framework spans multiple economic sectors—including land use, land-use change, and forestry and health systems—and provides details on the different types of mitigation actions, levers of change, and societal actors with the agency to implement specific mitigation actions. This framework aims to inform future research on the magnitude of health co-benefits of climate change mitigation, and provide strategies to communicate health co-benefits to support increases in mitigation ambition and societal acceptance of mitigation actions.