Health, climate breakdown, and nuclear risks at COP31

As world leaders prepare for COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, from 9 to 20 November 2026, the climate debate must confront a central question: what does security mean when the basic conditions for human health and survival are increasingly at risk? For more than three decades, humanitarian advocates, health professionals, and disarmament campaigners have argued that true security begins with the protection of human life. Today, climate breakdown makes this argument more urgent than ever.

Climate change is no longer a distant environmental issue. It is a growing public health emergency that intensifies heat exposure, threatens food and water security, disrupts essential health services, and deepens existing inequalities. At the same time, governments continue to invest vast resources in military expansion and nuclear arsenals that cannot protect communities from climate driven disasters.

The 2025 Lancet Countdown report documents worsening health risks across multiple indicators. It estimates that heat related mortality has risen by 23 percent since the 1990s, reaching approximately 546000 deaths annually. These findings highlight the human cost of delayed climate action and the urgency of placing health at the center of climate policy. Moreover, the ongoing 2026 El Niño episode, already intensifying heatwaves and altering disease dynamics, further exposes the fragility of global health systems under accelerating climate breakdown.

This crisis exposes a profound contradiction in global priorities. States acknowledge the need to protect life while sustaining policies that leave populations vulnerable to environmental disruption and catastrophic nuclear risks. COP31 should help challenge this contradiction by placing human health, climate resilience, peace, and nuclear risk reduction within a broader vision of human security.

Climate change is a public health emergency

The health consequences of climate breakdown are already visible across continents. Extreme heat places older adults, outdoor workers, children, and people with chronic conditions at heightened risk. Floods contaminate drinking water, damage hospitals, and interrupt treatment. Drought threatens nutrition and livelihoods, while shifting environmental conditions alter the spread of infectious diseases.

These pressures do not affect everyone equally. Communities with limited access to healthcare, safe housing, clean water, and social protection face the greatest risks while possessing the fewest resources to respond.

For patients dependent on regular medication, dialysis, or essential services, a damaged clinic or disrupted supply chain can turn an environmental emergency into a life threatening medical crisis. For people with disabilities and older adults, inaccessible shelters, interrupted care, and inadequate early warning systems increase danger.

Health resilience must therefore become a core component of climate adaptation. Climate policy should strengthen health infrastructure, disease surveillance, emergency preparedness, and access to essential services, especially in underserved communities. A climate summit that fails to place human health at its center risks overlooking the very people whose lives its decisions should protect.

Militarised security and the cost of misplaced priorities

Global spending patterns reveal the scale of the challenge. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, world military expenditure reached 2.887 trillion dollars in 2025, an increase of 2.9 percent over the previous year.

Military budgets cannot simply be transferred directly to health or climate programs. States have different obligations, and budgets are not interchangeable. Yet the scale and continued growth of military spending raise legitimate questions about priorities and opportunity costs.

Climate resilient hospitals, reliable water systems, emergency response services, and community based adaptation require sustained investment. When essential public services remain underfunded while military expansion receives substantial resources, the imbalance has consequences for human wellbeing.

Militarised security offers no direct solution to extreme heat, failing harvests, contaminated water, or overwhelmed health systems. Where conflict and environmental stress intersect, communities may face displacement, damaged infrastructure, reduced access to healthcare, and prolonged humanitarian emergencies.

Security cannot be defined only by military strength. Protecting people requires investment in the conditions that allow them to live safely and with dignity.

Nuclear weapons: an existential health threat

Nuclear weapons represent the most catastrophic dimension of this contradiction. Their use would cause mass casualties, severe burns, radiation injuries, destruction of medical infrastructure, and long term harm to human health and the environment. A large scale nuclear war could disrupt food production and threaten populations far beyond the countries directly involved.

Climate change does not automatically lead to nuclear conflict. However, environmental pressures, resource insecurity, and geopolitical tensions can interact with existing rivalries. In a crisis, these overlapping pressures may complicate decision making and increase the consequences of miscalculation.

Health systems would be unable to respond effectively to a nuclear detonation. Hospitals, medical personnel, transport networks, electricity supplies, and communications could themselves be damaged. Climate related vulnerabilities would make an already catastrophic emergency even harder to manage.

Nuclear weapons are not only instruments of strategy. They are a profound threat to public health, humanitarian protection, and the future of human communities.

Why COP31 should address nuclear risks

COP31 is not a nuclear disarmament conference, and its negotiating mandate should not be confused with the wider human security agenda. Yet the summit provides an important opportunity to examine how climate vulnerability, public health, conflict, and nuclear risks interact.

Four considerations support this approach:

1. Climate pressures can compound instability, making conflict prevention increasingly important.

2. Military and nuclear expenditure raises questions about resources available for climate adaptation and public health.

3. Nuclear use would produce catastrophic humanitarian consequences, overwhelming systems already strained by climate impacts.

4. Human security requires addressing interconnected threats rather than treating them in isolation.

Disarmament and the protection of human life

The case for addressing nuclear risks at COP31 builds on decades of international disarmament and humanitarian advocacy. The NPT, the CTBT, and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons each contribute to global norms and obligations. Their relevance lies not in having resolved the nuclear threat, but in sustaining legal standards and humanitarian principles.

The humanitarian disarmament movement has long argued that weapons must be judged by their consequences for civilians, health, dignity, and future generations. Climate breakdown strengthens this argument. Protecting human life requires reducing the risks of catastrophic violence as well as adapting to environmental threats.

A human security agenda for COP31

COP31 should advance a practical agenda that places people at the center of climate policy:

• Strengthen health centered climate adaptation.

• Confront the opportunity costs of excessive military spending.

• Support nuclear risk reduction and progress toward disarmament.

• Protect communities facing overlapping crises.

• Improve early warning and emergency response.

• Recognise peacebuilding as part of human security.

The responsible use of AI

Artificial intelligence can support this agenda when used responsibly. AI systems can help monitor climate sensitive diseases, strengthen early warning networks, improve risk analysis, and support emergency response planning. They can also help identify gaps in health services and highlight communities facing overlapping environmental and social pressures. Including the responsible use of AI in climate and health planning can help governments act earlier, protect vulnerable populations, and improve coordination. Yet AI cannot replace political commitment, public investment, or the human values that guide decisions about peace and disarmament. Technology can assist, but human responsibility remains essential for protecting life, dignity, and the future of communities.

The climate crisis is measured not only in degrees of warming but in lives lost, illnesses intensified, and communities deprived of essential services. Nuclear risks add another dimension to this insecurity. COP31 offers an opportunity to move beyond narrow definitions of security toward the protection of people, their health, their dignity, and their future.

Resources

* Lancet Countdown, 2025 Report on Health and Climate Change.

* Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2025.

* United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), information on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

* World Health Organization (WHO), Health and Climate Change Country Profiles.

* United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), official COP31

Dr. Ghassan Shahrour is a physician, humanitarian disarmament advocate, and author on health and disability. has contributed to international discussions on human dignity, environmental accountability, and restraint in armed conflict. A campaigner with the ICBL, CMC, and ICAN, he supports global humanitarian efforts and also volunteers with the Greater Triangle Area Chapter of the American Red Cross. He also writes a recurring cultural editorial, “Yesterday through today’s eyes,” in Arabic.

This article was originally published on Countercurrents.