Here in Norway, we have experienced this with acid rain. For global warming, fossil fuel combustion processes in Europe may eventually threaten the daily lives of the people of the low-lying island state of the Maldives. Global warming may also contribute to increasing the altitude at which malaria-carrying mosquitoes breed in already vulnerable African settings. Just as health and environment must be seen together, none of these problems can be separated from the issue of poverty. Poverty is the greatest polluter, and as long as nearly 1.3 billion people live in absolute poverty, progress will remain slow.
Health is a yardstick of our success or failure in human development.
While this century has seen enormous progress in the health field, poverty is eating away at many of these gains. For example, half a century ago, the majority of the world's population died before the age of 50. Today, life expectancy in developing countries is 64 years and is projected to reach 71 years by 2020. However, in some countries, Russia, for instance, or in parts of Africa, the diseases that prey on the poor have now sharply reduced life expectancy. My message to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 was that poverty degrades not only those who suffer it, but also those who tolerate it.