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Electric drones that cut travel emissions to deliver life-saving chemotherapy drugs to patients, reusable surgical textiles for the operating room, technology that reduces pain relief emissions that are 300 times more environmentally harmful than carbon dioxide. These are just some of the innovations from the UK that are helping to tackle one of the biggest global health challenges of our generation – climate change.

Today, across the world, the net zero agenda is more important than ever. Evidence shows that our planet is getting hotter, with average temperatures now 1.2°C higher than in the pre-industrial era. The current projections are that they are on track to increase beyond the 1.5°C tipping point – by as much as 2.7°C at the end of the century.

Rising temperatures pose a growing threat directly to human health, including to our food and water security, the biodiversity of the planet’s diverse species, and entire ecosystems. To prevent these catastrophic health impacts, the world must limit temperature rise to 1.5°C – by halving our CO2 by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050.

Human health and well-being are inextricably linked to the health of the planet – which is why it has been identified as the most urgent global health threat of the century. Higher temperatures, extreme weather such as flooding, heatwaves and drought – which are expected to increase in frequency over the coming years – and rising sea levels, pose a threat to many of the social determinants for good health.

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Our health systems therefore also need to adapt to this change, to consider their environmental impact and the impact on populations’ health. How do we minimise health systems’ environmental impact? How do we build clinical transformation to adapt? How do we bring key stakeholders and communities together towards this?

In 2020, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) became the world’s first health service to commit to reaching net zero – 2040 for the emissions it controls and 2045 for those it can influence – spurred on by factors such as air pollution accounting for one in 20 deaths with harmful emissions causing increased cases of asthma, heart disease and lung cancer.