Canada-wide Sustainable Healthcare
from Desflurane-free in 2025
to Coordinated for Climate-Resilience by 2028
a national campaign by
Summary
This national campaign, led by POWER with AFMC as a key partner, aims to transform medical education in Canada by integrating planetary health into curricula, clinical practice, and policy advocacy.
Roadmap for the Implementation of the Declaration on Planetary Health
As climate change increasingly threatens Canadians’ health—from deadly heatwaves and wildfires to rising eco-anxiety—our healthcare system must be equipped to respond. Yet most medical schools lack sufficient education on climate and health. This campaign identifies current efforts, uncovers critical gaps in knowledge, leadership, and resources, and offers a path forward. Grounded in Indigenous knowledge systems and aligned with global health and sustainability goals, the campaign empowers future physicians to lead in a climate-resilient, low-carbon healthcare future.
Blocks in purple are new proposed structures
The visual roadmap is also available in French.
La feuille de route visuelle est aussi disponible en français.
Our Campaign Goals
As of March 2025, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nunavut and Northwest Territories have phased out desflurane
Goal 1— Dramatically reduce Desflurane by Jan 2026 in alignment with European Union Goals building on the successes of Newfoundland and Labrador (NFLD) and the Northwest Territories (NWT),
Goal 2— using the wins and hope created by goal 1, create capacity, teams, relationships, and momentum towards the creation of a network of provincial and territorial secretariats for sustainable, climate-resilient healthcare in Canada by the end of 2028.
Goal 3— Use the November 2025 Health x Climate Gathering to obtain commitments from various actors and assign roles in the implementation of the Roadmap for Planetary Health and Sustainable Health Systems for Canadian Medical Professionals, which was prepared for the Association of Faculties of Medicine Canada (AFMC) and approved by the Deans of Canada’s Medical Schools in 2024 and which will shortly be released publicly. This will allow us to fully coordinate for sustainable, climate-resilient healthcare by the end of 2028.
Campaign Progress
Note: this map is not complete. If you would like to add your hospital, send us a note at gagnon.will@gmail.com.
This work builds on the hard work and dedication of many volunteers across the country. You can find the OMA list of hospitals that have eliminated or reduced desflurane from their operations here. Thank you for your help!
How you can help
Fill our 1 min volunteer survey
Would you like to join our target-based advocacy efforts regarding desflurane phase-out and sustainable healthcare and get connected into the group doing this work in your jurisdiction with our national support? Answer our short survey here and let us know how you would like to contribute.
Get your organization to endorse our campaign
If your organization wishes to endorse this campaign, please send us an email confirmation of support at gagnon.will@gmail.com with your preferred logo. We will then show your logo on our campaign communications including website. We thank you for your support!
Our Campaign Team
Endorsing Organizations
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  | |
Theory
Climate Changes Health in Canada
The World Health Organization has long called climate change the greatest global health threat of the 21st century. In Canada, its impacts include trauma, displacement and poor air quality related to severe wildfires, deaths from heat emergencies, food insecurity related to changes in crops and land-based food availability, emerging infectious disease risks including the spread of Lyme Disease, and mental health challenges related to both subacute long-term risks like eco-anxiety and ecological grief, and acute risks related to the traumas of disaster and displacement.
Our Theory of Change
Image from Learning to treat the climate emergency together: social tipping interventions by the health community, The Lancet Planetary Health
Defined through an international expert consensus process and in consultation with Marshall Ganz of Harvard, the Target-based change making model aligns with Ganz’s own teachings as well as evidence from political science, behavioural change, communications, and movement-building.
It is based on an understanding that the limiting factor in work for a healthy climate is not that people don’t care, it’s that they are limited in their pathways to agency through a combination of an inability to cope (problems of the heart), uncertainty as to what to do (challenges of the head), or a lack of ability to practically accomplish tasks (problems of the hands). This model addresses these challenges through attention to story to help and motivate the heart, strategic target-setting and tactics to inform the mind, and coordination and training to enable the hands. Losses are reframed into learning steps with the help of instruction and feedback from a well-trained and caring change-making coach.
The key concept is that momentum is generated through iterative wins that each contribute to building skill, financial capital, social capital, political capital, and a larger team, yielding a bandwagon-jumping effect and the power required to achieve progressively more ambitious targets.
By thinking through elements of strategic target-setting, tactics, and story-telling, the POWER secretariat is able to provide a pathway to agency for health sector workers who otherwise feel stuck in their efforts for a healthy response to climate change, and to coach them through the different elements of change-making and reframe losses as learning moments.
Roadmap for Planetary Health and Sustainable Health Systems for Canadian Medical Professionals
Excerpt: “Global surveys of medical school education confirm very low rates of climate change and air pollution inclusion in curricula.10 In Canada, medical students emphasize the need for improved education on planetary health. The 2019 report by the Canadian Federation of Medical
Students’ Health and Environment Adaptive Response Task Force (HEART) found inadequate
planetary health education across Canadian medical schools. The 2021 follow-up report shows
some progress but identifies ongoing deficiencies. Medical students advocate for a curriculum
that integrates planetary health with social determinants of health and emphasizes
environmental sustainability in clinical practice. Surveys indicate that most practicing physicians
believe that climate change is important, but do not know how to counsel patients or interact
with policymakers.11 This underscores the need for enhanced education in medical curricula
and continuing medical education to prepare physicians for the health impacts of climate
change.
Additional Resources
- Diminuer l’empreinte carbone des agents anesthésiques inhalés au bloc opératoire lors d’une anesthésie générale : stratégies et enjeux à considérer, L’Institut national d’excellence en santé et en services sociaux— 2024;
- Ontario’s Anesthesiologists Position Statement on Reporting Anesthetic Gases in the Ontario Hospitals Greenhouse Gas Inventory, Ontario Medical Association
- Greening the OR: CAS Position Statement on Reducing Harmful Emissions, Waste and Costs, Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society
- Environmental sustainability within pharmacy, International Pharmaceutical Federation
News
“Scotland first to ban environmentally harmful anaesthetic”
March 2, 2023
“Scotland has become the first country in the world to stop its hospitals using the anaesthetic desflurane because of the threat it poses to the environment. NHS data suggests the gas, used to keep people unconscious during surgery, has a global warming potential 2,500 times greater than carbon dioxide.”— read the full article here
“REGULATION (EU) 2024/573 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL”
February 7, 2024
“The use of desflurane as an inhalation anaesthetic shall be prohibited from 1 January 2026, except where such use is strictly required and no other anaesthetic can be used on medical grounds. The healthcare institution shall keep evidence of the medical justification, and provide it, upon request, to the competent authority of the Member State concerned or to the Commission.”— read the full article here
“NL Health Services Reduces Environmental Impacts by Discontinuing Desflurane Anesthetic”
December 30, 2024
“Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) Health Services has taken further action to help reduce its environmental impact under its environmental sustainability strategy. Newfoundland and Labrador is the first province in Canada to discontinue the purchase of desflurane, an anesthetic agent that has been used in operating rooms internationally for decades.”— read the full article here
“NWT ‘first in Canada’ to phase out polluting anesthetic gas”
January 8, 2025
“Physicians in the NWT say the territory is the first Canadian jurisdiction to stop using desflurane, an anesthetic gas described as “super polluting— read the full article here.
Desflurane, a gas long used in anesthesia, has a global warming potential (GWP) thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide: it accounts for up to 80% of anesthetic-related greenhouse gas emissions. Alternatives like sevoflurane and total intravenous anesthesia offer comparable efficacy with significantly lower environmental impact. Additionally, this switch represents cost savings for Canadians, as desflurane is twice as expensive as sevoflurane. Phasing out desflurane is a priority in sustainable healthcare, with Scotland having withdrawn it from operating rooms, and the UK having committed to phasing it out by the end of 2024. Canada has committed to climate-resilient, sustainable low-carbon healthcare. Desflurane phase-out is a priority intervention in our analysis of climate-related social tipping interventions by the health sector.
You can find our campaign document here.
For more information, feel free to contact:
William Gagnon, Director of Strategy
POWER Wellbeing
gagnon.will@gmail.com
+1 514 996 6284
You can also book a meeting with me here directly.
a campaign by
a project made possible by
