Five principles for health system decarbonization

Transforming health care systems to be low-carbon and adapting them to climate impacts will ensure their climate-resilience. Further, these actions bring improvements in public health, economic savings, and enhanced social well-being.

Often, a first step for health systems in their journey to decarbonization is to identify their main emissions sources to prioritize interventions to reduce them. At a country level, the driving approach to a first-time emissions baselining should use national-level data, with facility-level data complementing this approach when available. At the facility level, building this capacity is key and should be pursued at a feasible pace. Baselines at both levels (national and facility-based) will likely have data limitations at the beginning - but the process, data collection tools, and analysis can and should be improved over time. Ultimately, the approach to be used will largely depend on a country’s objectives, data availability and access, and their internal capacity.

Data is the key element to understanding the boundaries of a baseline study and what relationships will be required to access it, as health authorities do not usually hold all the data required to measure emissions. Begin by conducting a diagnostic to assess the type of data available, who owns and has access to it, and whether there are restrictions in sharing data between government agencies.

For this work to be carried out successfully and to become a part of the institutional framework, health authorities need to secure funding, build teams, and identify the training needs for all parties to be able to conduct the necessary analyses beyond a baseline. Key to this is the development of analytical teams that can carry this work into the future.

While target-setting can be an aspirational exercise, it is important to combine ambition with the reality of a national context: a country’s existing regulatory environment, broader climate plans, and commitments. National roadmaps can allow countries to set different scenarios, while plans of action can set priorities and activities, budgets, and timelines.