Globally, the greatest health threat of the 21st century is climate change. Hospitals will inevitably have to increasingly deal with the consequences of climate change when new pathogens from distant countries appear or when the elderly, chronically ill, children or otherwise particularly affected people dehydrate on hot days with unprecedented heat records, resulting in cardiovascular problems. A study by the Robert Koch Institute concludes that in the three summers between 2018 and 2020 alone, more than 19,000 people died in Germany due to the heat.
However, the health sector is also a major contributor to the climate crisis by itself being responsible for a significant proportion of climate-damaging emissions. This Wuppertal Report shows one way in which hospitals can prospectively become part of the solution to what is currently the greatest transformation challenge. Hospitals are a microcosm of society. They literally reflect everything that makes up the life of a society with regard to the challenge of climate protection: electricity and heat supply, mobility, nutrition, resource consumption and waste. This Wuppertal Report makes it clear that hospitals can be understood as real laboratories of the upcoming transformation process towards a climate-friendly and resource-efficient society.
The target image Climate-Neutral Hospital developed for the Krankenhausgesellschaft Nordrhein-Westfalen e. V. (KGNW) provides hospitals with implementation-oriented information on how they can set out on the path to climate neutrality:
- It identifies climate protection-relevant fields of action in operations.
- It illustrates how KGNW can support hospitals in NRW on their way toward climate neutrality.
- It motivates them to actively tackle climate protection as an important corporate goal.
Oliver Wagner, Ulrich Jansen, Lena Tholen, Anja Bierwirth:
Zielbild: "Klimaneutrales Krankenhaus"
Maßnahmen für mehr Klimaschutz im Krankenhaus
Wuppertal, 2022
(Wuppertal Report no. 24)