Climate change has a broad range of health impacts and tackling climate change could be the greatest opportunity for improving global health this century. Conversations on climate change and health are often incomplete, giving little attention to structural discrimination and the need for racial justice.

The second is to highlight unequal responsibility for climate change historically between countries, achieved through a geographical visualisation of secondary data, comparing responsibility for and the health burden of climate change with maps. Although the evidence summarised here points towards an unequal distribution of health impacts of climate change, unequal responsibility for climate change was not highlighted in the body of literature reviewed here, suggesting a gap in research linking unequal responsibility with health effects.

Applying racial justice to climate change and health reveals opportunities for the health community to redress unequal power dynamics between minoritised communities and the geopolitical and commercial factions that dominate the world economy and directly affect health. Further, the search strategy was limited to describing health inequities due to climate change but not the effects of drivers of climate change, such as consumerism and extractivism, or more broadly conceived health effects, such as wellbeing and social health.

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