E N V I R O N M E N T A N D H E A L T H
London '99: selfishness pays back
When people fear for themselves, they care - a fact of human nature no matter how one chooses to describe it.
By Albena Arnaudova,
Editor of Bulgarian health magazine Zdrave
Is this so bad? If getting frightened about the health impact of environmental degradation is a good way to push forward environmental action-oriented decisions, then allow it. As long as we witness development, any driving force is good. And health is also an excellent indicator about the success and failure of environmental policies.This was taken for granted by some 1,000 participants from 51 countries who gathered in London from June 16-18 for Europe's third conference for its national environment and health ministers.
Ten years ago, at the first such conference in Frankfurt, the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched the idea that there should be common pan-European environment and health policies. A good goal but a long way to go, it seemed then. Especially as neither the public nor decision-makers were precisely aware of the huge scale of the problems.
Before the second such conference in Helsinki in 1994, it became evident that pollution triggers short- and long-term effects on human health. So the WHO accelerated the process of re-focusing ministerial attention from well-phrased objectives to real planning for action.
"Action in partnership" was the logo of this London conference. Of course, an intuitive reaction is that it sounds too good to be true. And there is reason for scepticism. As with every huge ministerial gathering, one asks whether these hundreds of important people actually do something while sitting for several days in a fancy hall in a beautiful European capital.
Partnership was there, definitely. There was also more than a standard conference commitment to action, for several reasons.
The six major topics of discussion - water, transport, good practices in industry and the workplace, implementing national environment and health action plans (EHAPs), economics and public participation - were chosen by the countries themselves. Six countries had taken the lead in these areas since the Helsinki conference, building up to their reports for London through a difficult five-year process of clarifying the issues, finding common European ground for solving them and preparing documents as key instruments to do so.
Documents may not seem like much of an achievement, but in London everyone had a strong feeling of real action being taken when the Charter on Transport was adopted and the Water Protocol was signed by 36 countries (see news page 4).
Discussions on the economics of the issues gave solid ground to the widely acclaimed "prevention approach." In Europe, it seems to make common sense to pay in advance to prevent environment and health problems.
Experience shows that, at the municipal level, financing to prevent specific local environment and health problems was often possible when included in local EHAPs. There are good indications that ministers at London committed themselves to take the same road with their national EHAPs.
It was encouraging and surprising that two major issues were added to the agenda - climate change and the vulnerability of children towards environmental factors. Five years ago, they were not on the WHO agenda at all.
Of course, NGOs blamed the ministers for neglecting a whole range of other issues that they considered equally crucial. But nobody can deny that NGOs had every chance to express their positions - both in preparations for all panel discussions at the conference and at the parallel Healthy Planet Forum happening next door to the ministerial event.
The NGO program was rich and serious. They said much about genetically modified organisms, access to environment and health information, public participation and vulnerability. Their Food Summit grabbed the attention of journalists and ministerial delegates. Predictably, NGOs declared dissatisfaction with the degree of enforcement guaranteed by ministers for agreements made at the conference.
Even so, the Water Protocol as a legally binding document and the Ministerial Declaration give good reasons for hope that the previously agreed to texts were not abused in London and that the words are strongly bringing environment and health ministers on the continent to action.
A notable side effect was new linkages among people with similar interests, professions and plans. Guests from the business sector, health professionals from many countries and journalists from Central and Eastern Europe created or expanded new networks - both at the ministerial and NGO venue.
Partnership was in action at London99. Health concerns gave additional emotion to major environmental issues and clarified how serious things have become with our quality of life. The third environment and health conference proved to be an honest summary of what Europe has accomplished in the last few decades.
