Economic analysis of health impacts of carbon pricing on land-use

The proposed work is - to our knowledge - the first integrated economic analysis of a single policy intervention and its potential to influence three interlinked threats: the global health crises of both non-communicable diseases and new infectious diseases such as Covid-19, as well as environmental degradation, including biodiversity loss and climate change. The work will comprise modelling the consequences of carbon pricing, set at a level compatible with keeping climate change within planetary boundaries, with outcomes including land-system change, agricultural production, food prices, diets and health outcomes, and effects on infectious disease and biodiversity. The analysis will consider potential differential effects of carbon pricing across socio-economic groups, and between high, medium and low-income countries, as a basis for considering policy interventions to mitigate inequitable outcomes. This analysis will contribute to the goal of The Lancet-Chatham House Commission which is to identify actions that can impact positively across the shared drivers of the three threats to human and planetary health described above. Importantly it will provide novel evidence for the ways in which co-benefits and co-costs of interventions might form a significant part of the political and economic cases for intervening at national and international levels and optimising policy design.