Three Belgians helped shape a landmark report calling on WHO and governments to treat climate change as the health emergency it already is
Brussels, 21 May 2026
When the Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health launched its Call to Action at the World Health Assembly in Geneva this week, three Belgians were at the centre of it. Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, convened the independent Commission. Professors Hans Bruyninckx and Sandrine Dixson-Declève sat among its 13 Commissioners, bringing decades of combined expertise in environmental policy, climate science and sustainable economics. Their message to Belgium – and to governments across Europe – is unambiguous: the window to prevent irreversible harm is narrowing, and the cost of waiting is already being paid in lives.
Europe is the fastest-warming region on earth, with temperatures rising at twice the global average rate. In the summer of 2025, nearly 70% of the approximately 24,000 heat-related deaths recorded across 854 European cities were directly attributable to climate change. Every day, 1,700 people across the WHO European Region die prematurely from air pollution caused by fossil fuel combustion. The tiger mosquito – carrier of dengue and chikungunya – is advancing northward, placing nearly 5 million additional people at risk of infection every year.
Against this backdrop, the Commission’s Call to Action makes 17 concrete recommendations across four domains: treating climate change as a threat to health and security; making health systems climate-resilient; strengthening local climate-health capacity in cities and municipalities; and fundamentally reforming the subsidies and financing that are currently driving the crisis.
On that last point, the numbers are stark. Fossil fuel subsidies across Europe amounted to approximately €444 billion in 2023. In some countries in the region, those subsidies exceed total investment in health. The Commission’s message is direct: governments are paying to make people sick and calling it energy policy.
“Climate change is a security threat, a health emergency and an economic time bomb, all rolled into one,” said Dr Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe. “This Commission is telling leaders clearly: act now, while a window of preventive action still exists.”
The Commission is also calling on WHO itself to go further, formally demanding that the Organisation declare climate change a public health emergency of international concern – a first for any body of this seniority convened by WHO’s own leadership.
For Belgium specifically, the call to action carries particular weight. The country’s own Centre for Risk Analysis of Climate Change has demonstrated that climate change poses a growing threat to Belgian security, stability and economic future. Belgium is not insulated from the health consequences the Commission describes – it is exposed to them.
“This report is not a warning about the future,” said Professor Hans Bruyninckx, Commissioner and former Executive Director of the European Environment Agency. “It is a description of what is already happening – to health systems, to communities, to the most vulnerable. The evidence has been clear for years. What this Commission has done is translate that evidence into recommendations that governments, including Belgium’s, can no longer defer.”
The Commission’s Call to Action also confronts the economic model that has enabled the crisis. GDP, it argues, is the wrong scorecard – it counts fossil fuel consumption as output while ignoring the health costs of pollution, the burden of climate disasters and the welfare of future generations. New indicators that reflect health, equity and environmental sustainability are needed to guide governments and provide genuine public accountability.
“The economic and health arguments for acting now are inseparable,” said Professor Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Honorary President of the Club of Rome, Executive Chair of Earth4All and Commissioner. “Investing in prevention, in clean energy, in sustainable food systems and in climate-resilient health infrastructure is not a cost. It is the highest-return investment European governments can make. Belgium has the expertise, the institutions and the political tradition to lead on this. The question is whether it will choose to.”
In the coming months, the Commission will present its recommendations to health ministers, mayors and civil society across the region. The Belgian government is among those being called on to act – on subsidies, on health system resilience, on the integration of climate risk into national health planning, and on the adoption of well-being indicators that go beyond GDP.
The full Call to Action is available here: https://www.who.int/europe/publications/m/item/pan-european-commission-on-climate-and-health–call-to-action
ENDS
Media contacts: Bhanu Bhatnagar, WHO Regional Office for Europe: bbhatnagar@who.int
Notes to editors: The Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health was convened in June 2025 by Dr Hans Kluge. It is chaired by H.E. Katrín Jakobsdóttir, former Prime Minister of Iceland, with Professor Sir Andy Haines of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as Chief Scientific Advisor. Full Commission membership here: https://www.who.int/docs/librariesprovider2/default-document-library/pecch-members.pdf