This challenge deserves the best that science, governance, education and development assistance have to offer. To meet the challenge, the health and environment sectors will have to work together, and find a common agenda rooted in local concerns. These are some of the conclusions of a new and wide ranging report from the Stockholm Environment Institute and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. While there is enormous variation among ACP countries, few contribute appreciably to global resource depletion and waste generation. On the other hand, the burden of disease in the ACP is among the highest in the world, and a particularly large share of this burden about one third is related to environmental conditions.
Children are the worst affected.
The report clearly demonstrates that these environmental condition are, in turn, closely related to poverty, and the broader set of development challenges these countries face. However, what emerges is not an old agenda, requiring more of the same, but new challenges that call out for innovative forms of inter-sectoral collaboration, engagement with civil society, and an international agenda that responds to local concerns and priorities. A health perspective can make a major contribution to setting environmental priorities, especially in the low income settings. Demographic shifts are changing the health profiles in many countries, and shifting the environmental burden of disease. Socio-economic changes, such as structural adjustment and globalisation, are changing the very basis of local environment and health management.