The Agents of Climate Justice in Healthcare
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21504166 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joshua Parker (0000-0001-5934-8755, Lancaster Medical School Health Innovation One Sir John Fisher Drive Lancaster UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Bioethics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0269-9702 • E-ISSN: 1467-8519 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/bioe.70106 |
| PMID | 42106958 |
| OpenAlex | W7160781236 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 36 |
This paper addresses the critical issue of decarbonising healthcare systems to help combat climate change. I focus on identifying the ‘agents of justice’ responsible for this transformation. Beginning with the claim that healthcare's greenhouse gas emissions cause injustice, the paper assumes that achieving a net zero healthcare system is essential for climate justice. The discussion centres on two prevailing perspectives: one that primarily assigns responsibility to healthcare organisations and another that holds individual healthcare professionals accountable. The paper advocates for a pluralistic approach to responsibility, contending that the complexity and scale of reducing healthcare emissions necessitate allocating responsibilities based on effectiveness. This leads to the identification of two types of responsibility: first‐order responsibilities, which involve direct actions to reduce emissions, and second‐order responsibilities, which involve supporting and ensuring the fulfilment of first‐order duties. The paper clarifies how mitigation responsibilities should be allocated across organisations and individuals by expanding the scope of responsibility to include a broader range of agents, both within and beyond the healthcare sector. By distinguishing between first‐order and second‐order responsibilities, the paper offers a clearer framework for understanding the distribution of obligations in achieving climate justice in healthcare. Ultimately, it underscores that focusing solely on direct mitigation efforts by organisations or clinicians is inadequate, and a more comprehensive, multi‐agent approach is required to effectively decarbonise healthcare systems
Climate justice · Economic Justice · Greenhouse gas · Health care · Healthcare system · Climate Change and Geoengineering · Climate Change and Health Impacts · Healthcare Facilities Design and Sustainability
The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change
Managing the health effects of climate change
Agents of Justice
The environmental footprint of health care
The meaning of net zero and how to get it right
‘Green’ bioethics widens the scope of eligible values and overrides patient demand
How should institutions help clinicians to practise greener anaesthesia
Focusing attention on physicians’ climate-related duties may risk missing the bigger picture
Barriers to green inhaler prescribing
Navigating climate responsibility
Duties of healthcare institutions and climate justice
Physicians’ duty to climate protection as an expression of their professional identity
Environmental justice and climate change policies
Sufficiency and healthcare emissions
What is a Social Practice
Distributing Responsibilities
Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change
Healthcare exceptionalism
Where the Action Is
On the Site of Distributive Justice
Institutions and the Demands of Justice
Distributing the burdens of climate change
The agents of justice
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |