Accelerating action on the climate-health crisis at COP27

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED:
2 November 2022

The World Health Organization has called climate change the biggest health threat facing humanity.¹

From extreme heat to air pollution and changing weather patterns, climate change is impacting our lives and health in increasingly debilitating ways. At COP27, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt, we will join global health leaders to call for greater cross-sector partnership to accelerate action on climate.

Learn more about our engagement at COP27 in the video below. 

The climate-health crisis

The need for action at scale to address the climate crisis is more urgent than ever. Climate change is already impacting our health and resulting in a rise in chronic conditions such as heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and respiratory illnesses.² The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that air pollution alone causes seven million premature deaths each year.³     

As the Lancet Countdown 2022 Report outlines, “the world faces a critical juncture. A health-centred, aligned response to the compounding crises can still deliver a future where people can not only survive, but thrive”.⁴

At AstraZeneca, we are deeply committed to taking action on sustainability, as demonstrated through our $1 billion Ambition Zero Carbon programme, AZ Forest initiative to plant and maintain 50 million trees by the end of 2025, and transition to import 100% of our electricity globally from renewable sources, achieved in 2021.^5,6,7 Our pandemic response and role as co-founder of the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience (PHSSR) are further examples of this commitment.⁸  

Taking bold action on climate is critical as a member of the healthcare sector, which contributes around 4-5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)⁹ each year. Recognising the interconnection between climate and health, we are working with governments and policymakers around the world to advance sustainable healthcare solutions which protect patient outcomes, while reducing the environmental footprint of care. Together, everyone involved in the delivery of healthcare has a collective responsibility to reduce emissions and deliver more sustainable, resilient healthcare – for the health of people, society and the planet.

Accelerating the transition to net zero health systems

At COP27, our CEO Pascal Soriot hosted a high-level engagement on climate and health as the champion of the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) Health Systems Task Force. He was joined by the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Rt Hon Baroness Scotland KC, industry CEOs, government officials, and leaders from WHO, UNICEF and NHS England. The discussion focused on the action the SMI Health Systems Task Force is taking to lower the emissions of healthcare through collaboration at scale.

Delivering on our bold emissions reduction targets at COP27

Engagement across our entire value chain is critical for us to reduce our Scope 3 emissions. At COP27, we joined global pharmaceutical companies to accelerate the decarbonisation of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) supply chains, addressing this shared challenge through the newly launched Activate programme.

One year ago, in collaboration with industry peers and Schneider Electric, we founded the Energize programme to help healthcare industry suppliers access renewable electricity at scale. COP27 marks a major milestone for the programme¹⁰, which announced its first buyers’ cohort for renewable electricity this week. By enabling suppliers to reduce their scope 2 emissions, the programme in turn enables us to reduce our Scope 3 emissions.

Engaging with regional bodies like the European Union on climate change is critical to support legislation with global impact that protects both people and the planet and enables the transition to more environmentally sustainable healthcare solutions. During COP27, in the European Parliament in Brussels, we convened a multidisciplinary discussion on opportunities for sustainable, net zero respiratory care.

Ambition Zero Carbon

COP27 is an opportunity to engage with key stakeholders on our flagship decarbonisation programme Ambition Zero Carbon, and how we are delivering this in key countries and through partnership.

We are pursuing ambitious science-based decarbonisation targets and accelerating our progress towards net zero. We are on track to reduce GHG emissions from our global operations and fleet (Scope 1 and 2) by 98% by 2026 (from a 2015 baseline).⁵

Our aim is to halve our entire value chain footprint (Scope 3) by 2030, on the way to a 90% reduction by 2045 (from a 2019 baseline)⁵, to become science-based net zero. We were one of the first seven companies to have our Scope 1-3 emission reduction targets verified under the new Science Based Targets initiative Net-Zero Corporate Standard.⁷

We were also the first pharmaceutical company to join and to belong to all three of the Climate Group’s campaigns RE100, EP100, and EV100⁵, supporting the drive towards decarbonisation through renewable electricity, energy productivity and electric vehicles. Today, more than half our vehicles are electric vehicles (EV), hybrid or plug-in hybrid – and we have committed to achieve our Ambition Zero Carbon targets by switching to a fully electric vehicle fleet.⁵

By 2030⁵, we will go even further than our science-based targets to become carbon negative for all residual emissions to remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than we emit.

Find out more about our flagship sustainability programmes