Health groups call for global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty
The World Health Organization (WHO) and almost 200 other health associations have made an unprecedented call for a global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty.
A call to action published on Wednesday, urges governments to agree a legally binding plan to phase out fossil fuel exploration and production, similar to the framework convention on tobacco, which was negotiated under the WHO’s auspices in 2003.
“The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” said the WHO president, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, the head of the WHO’s climate change department, said the letter was a watershed moment. “This is the first time the health sector has come together to issue such a statement explicitly about fossil fuels,” he told the Guardian. “The current burden of death and disease from air pollution is comparable to that of tobacco use, while the long-term effects of fossil fuels on the Earth’s climate present an existential threat to humanity – as do nuclear weapons.”
The campaign to end fossil fuel exploration and production has won wide support from the Dalai Lama and 100 other Nobel laureates, the Vatican, several cities and island states, more than 1,000 health professionals and almost 3,000 scientists and academics.
The initiative aims to emulate the successes of the treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, signed in 1968, which has to some extent limited the spread of atomic weapons and technology.
More countries have signed that treaty than any other arms-limiting convention, although nuclear powers such as India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan have not.
Ira Helfand, the Nobel peace prize winner and
Read more on theguardian.com
