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Climate change must be declared a "global health emergency" to shape governments' policies after heat caused three million deaths between 2016 and 2023, a report in The Lancet said Wednesday.

Published by the British Medical Journal ahead of the COP 31 climate summit in November, the 10th edition of the report brought together 146 researchers from 30 countries to assess the impact of climate change on the health of the world's population.

It said there were a record 710,000 heat-related deaths in 2023, with more than 70% of that toll linked to human-caused climate change.

Marina Romanello, the executive director of the health and climate research project Lancet Countdown, said there were "three million heat-related deaths globally in an eight-year span since the Paris Agreement" of 2015.

"That's roughly equivalent to the entire population of Wales being wiped out in the space of eight years due to heat," she told a news conference.

The legally binding international climate treaty adopted in the French capital aimed to limit global warming to well below 2C and pursue efforts to keep it to 1.5C compared to preindustrial levels.

Romanello said the global health emergency due to climate change should have "an integrated approach so that we're not responding to emergency after emergency."

Instead, she called for "a cohesive long-term response that builds resilience, builds capacities, and builds the possibilities of countries to avoid further emergencies moving forward."

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