Climate change, health and ethics

Embedding ethics across policy and practice addressing climate change and health

The ‘environment and health’ is a priority area for the NCOB, as set out in our new strategy. Within this area, we have decided to focus on how ethics can support UK policymakers who need to navigate the immediate and enduring global threat to health that climate change poses.

To inform our work, we commissioned two reviews which are now complete:

1. An ethics literature review
2. A legal and regulatory overview

These commissions provide useful and much-needed insights to inform our report, which we will publish by the end of this year, and the case studies that we intend to identify and collate next year.

The case studies we will develop will showcase the decisions policymakers and others are dealing with in their work to tackle the health impacts of climate change. This will help to highlight where and how ethics could be better embedded in policy and engaged for the benefit of us all.

You can read both reviews here: Ethics and legal reviews

Health, climate change and ethics – an overview

On 12 October 2023, we published an overview paper identifying where key ethical issues are arising in efforts to respond to the health impacts of climate change. We propose a set of principles and themes for considering these issues within policymaking decisions.

This paper is the outcome of a scoping exercise we carried out to identify ethical issues, including in relation to actions designed to mitigate and adapt to climate change. It examines these ethical issues under three linked headings:

• The ethics of the climate crisis;
• Ethical issues arising in responses to the climate crisis;
• Ethical issues relating to research into those responses.

Download the paper: Health, climate change and ethics - an overview

Project Lead