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Colombia ranked first in the Global Climate and Health Alliance’s 2026 Healthy NDC Scorecard, scoring 29 of 32 points for integrating health into its 2035 climate plan. Nigeria scored 25 and Cambodia 24. By contrast, several major emitting countries—including Japan, India and New Zealand—scored just 2 points, showing a sharp gap between climate-health language and the ambition of national emissions cuts.
What the 2026 scorecard found
Published on October 14, 2026, the scorecard evaluates whether national climate commitments connect climate change with air quality and population health, specify practical health actions, and match health priorities with sufficiently ambitious emissions reductions. It covers 132 countries that had submitted 2035 climate plans to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change before August 1, 2026. The joint European Union plan is included as one entry.
| Country or group | Score | What the result indicates |
|---|---|---|
| Colombia | 29/32 | Highest overall integration of health in the assessed climate plan |
| Nigeria | 25/32 | Second-highest score |
| Cambodia | 24/32 | Third-highest score |
| Paraguay | 22/32 | Among the next-highest scores |
| Timor-Leste | 22/32 | Among the next-highest scores |
Nineteen of the 20 highest scores went to low- and middle-income countries. The ranking is a GCHA assessment of submitted plans, not a United Nations ranking, and it measures what governments wrote and committed to—not whether those commitments have been implemented or have already improved health.
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Why Colombia ranked first
Colombia’s plan links its climate strategy directly to protecting people. It presents carbon neutrality and resilience by 2050 as ways to protect life and describes climate change as a direct threat to life, health, water, food, housing and peoples’ self-determination.
#1 Best Overall
The document also identifies concrete health-related risks rather than referring to health only in general terms. It names malnutrition, dengue, leishmaniasis, displacement, storms, floods, droughts and forest fires. That combination—an explicit health rationale, named hazards and a long-term climate objective—helped Colombia score strongly across the scorecard’s health-integration criteria.
A high score does not establish that every measure is funded, operating or producing better outcomes. It shows that the submitted national plan recognizes health and sets out a comparatively detailed framework for addressing climate-related risks.
How major emitters performed
The scorecard identifies a number of high-emitting countries whose plans give health much less prominence or pair health language with weak mitigation ambition.
| Country | Score |
|---|---|
| Japan | 2/32 |
| India | 2/32 |
| New Zealand | 2/32 |
| Republic of Korea | 4/32 |
| Russia | 6/32 |
| Brazil | 7/32 |
| Australia | 9/32 |
| China | 9/32 |
| United Kingdom | 9/32 |
These results matter because the countries with the largest present or historical emissions have the greatest ability to reduce pollution quickly and to limit health damage at home and abroad. A plan can mention health while still failing to cut emissions at the pace needed to prevent worsening climate impacts.
Rank #3
Health attention is not the same as adequate mitigation
The report highlights a second pattern: some plans score relatively well on health content but still lack enough emissions ambition to protect populations from worsening impacts.
| Country or plan | Health score | Assessment in the scorecard |
|---|---|---|
| Indonesia | 11 | Health attention is comparatively strong, but emissions ambition is insufficient |
| European Union | 12 | Health attention is comparatively strong, but emissions ambition is insufficient |
| South Africa | 13 | Health attention is comparatively strong, but emissions ambition is insufficient |
| Türkiye | 14 | Health attention is comparatively strong, but emissions ambition is insufficient |
| Canada | 16 | Health attention is comparatively strong, but emissions ambition is insufficient |
| United Arab Emirates | 19 | Health attention is comparatively strong, but emissions ambition is insufficient |
This distinction is central to the scorecard. Health-sector adaptation, surveillance or preparedness cannot compensate for mitigation that allows heat, air pollution and other climate hazards to intensify. The strongest plans need both specific health action and emissions reductions aligned with a country’s fair share of climate responsibility.
Rank #4
What national plans say about air pollution and black carbon
Air-quality policy is treated as a core part of climate-health planning because reducing combustion emissions can deliver immediate health benefits while also slowing warming. Yet only five plans—Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Paraguay—set explicit black-carbon reduction targets.
Black carbon is a major contributor to both global heating and air pollution. Exposure is associated with serious health harms, so the absence of a target in most plans is a significant gap. A plan may discuss cleaner air without setting a measurable black-carbon objective; the scorecard distinguishes between general recognition and a defined target.
Best Value
What the scorecard measures
The assessment compares plans across several connected questions:
- Does the national climate plan recognize health consequences of climate change and air pollution?
- Does it specify actions for the health sector and explain how those actions will be implemented?
- Does it include air-pollution or black-carbon targets?
- Are emissions reductions sufficiently ambitious and consistent with a country’s fair-share responsibility?
- Does the plan identify governance, monitoring and finance arrangements?
- Where data are available, how does the plan relate to reported air-pollution mortality?
The Global Climate and Health Alliance describes itself as a consortium of more than 300 health-professional and health-civil-society organizations and networks. Research lead Dr Nova Tebbe said the scorecard is intended to evaluate how governments consider health, compare that attention with emissions ambition and relate intended action to national air-pollution mortality. Executive director Dr Jeni Miller said air-quality action is a vital part of effective climate action because both pollution and climate change put people’s health and lives at risk.
How to interpret the rankings
- They assess plans, not outcomes. A score cannot prove that a policy has been financed, implemented or associated with a measurable change in mortality or disease.
- They are not a UNFCCC league table. The ranking was produced by GCHA using its own scoring framework.
- Country data are not interchangeable. The report includes mortality figures in some country entries, but there is no single global mortality statistic supplied with the ranking.
- The United States status is time-sensitive. Its NDC was analyzed, but GCHA describes it as inactive after the United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement.
What governments need to do next
The scorecard’s warning is practical: adding health language to a climate plan is not enough if emissions cuts remain too weak. The highest present and historical emitters need to reduce emissions fastest to capture domestic health co-benefits and avoid escalating impacts elsewhere. Developed countries also need to provide finance aligned with the Paris Agreement so developing countries can implement health-protective measures in their plans.
Colombia’s first-place result shows what detailed health framing can look like. The low scores among several major emitters show the unresolved problem: countries with the greatest mitigation capacity are not consistently pairing that capacity with explicit health protections, air-pollution targets and credible emissions ambition.
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