Global healthcare has a huge impact on the environment, but there are ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without increasing production costs, international health agency Unitaid has argued.
This organization, which works to ensure equitable access to medical innovations, examined the production chain of ten essential health products, such as anti-malaria and HIV medicines.
This study published on Tuesday shows that it is possible to reduce emissions by 70% by 2030, and more than half of this reduction without increasing production costs.
The conclusions were released on the eve of COP28, the UN climate summit to be held in Dubai, between November 30 and December 12, and which, for the first time, will include a day focused on climate and health.
For each of the ten health products examined, Unitaid analyzed climate impacts, including raw material procurement, waste, carbon emissions and plastic pollution.
The report reveals that these 10 supply chains emit more than 3.5 million tonnes of carbon per year.
The report indicates that emissions could be reduced, among other things, by recycling solvents and switching to renewable energy.
“We have identified twenty main technical solutions that could reduce emissions by 70 percent, of which 40 percent could be implemented without increasing the cost of production,” said Vincent Bretin, director of Unitaid, quoted by Agence France-Presse. (AFP).
However, going further and addressing the remaining 30% “would increase product costs,” the study authors say in the report.
The United Nations has been insisting on the need to immediately adopt “spectacular measures” to avoid further global warming, when the planet is heading towards 2.9ºC of warming.
To avoid a 3°C rise in temperatures by the end of the century, all countries will have to reduce emissions well beyond current commitments, cutting 42% of emissions by 2030 if they want to stay below 1.5 °C, a goal assumed in 2015 in the Paris Agreement on emissions reduction, indicates a UN report.
COP28 is held between November 30 and December 12 in Dubai, with the ambition of carrying out the first global evaluation of the Paris Agreement.
Source: TSF
