Healthy environments for healthy children: key messages for action

Overview

This booklet presents key messages for action, summarized from a set of chapters on different environmental health issues. The work is a result of an on-going partnership between WHO, UNEP and UNICEF in the area of children’s environmental health, and seeks to update the 2002 joint publication “Children in the New Millennium: Environmental Impact on Health.”

Over the last 20 years there have been acknowledgements at the highest level of the need to protect the environment in order to underpin efforts to safeguard child health. As far back as 1989, States pledged in the Convention on the Rights of the Child to “combat disease and malnutrition… taking into consideration the dangers and risks of environmental pollution.” Recently, the call for action to address children’s environmental health (CEH) has been gaining momentum, as more is known about how adverse environments can put children’s growth, development, well-being and very survival, at risk. Notably, the G8 Siracusa Environment Ministerial Meeting, (April, 2009) recently expressed “We can do more to ensure that children are born, grow, develop and thrive in environments with clean air, clean water, safe food, and minimal exposure to harmful chemicals.”

We have committed to this work faced with the knowledge that around three million children under five years die each year due to a number of largely preventable environment-related causes, and conscious of the fact that environmental challenges, including climatic change and increased urbanisation, have the potential to make every one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, including those on eradicating poverty and improving the health and well-being of children and their caregivers, less achievable. The poorest and most marginalized children in developing countries suffer most.

Although many commitments and international agreements have been made in relation to protecting children’s health from environmental threats, progress towards stemming these risks has been slow. Significant action is now required to achieve healthier, safer and cleaner environments – as this is not only imperative for child health, but also possible. Tools and mechanisms are available. Partnerships for acting together on many fronts, building on existing programmes and adapting concrete actions to local needs, can make a difference.

WHO, UNEP and UNICEF are jointly taking a step forward in this booklet, proposing key messages for concrete action to confront the environmental health issues faced by children, their parents and communities all over the world.

The aim is to provide decision makers at all levels (from the local to the international), including community leaders, teachers, health-care providers, parents, and other caregivers, with the information they need to promote healthier environments for children, using practical examples. The challenge is to ensure that everyone knows and understands the threats to child health and well-being from environmental risk factors and is motivated to take practical action to minimize these risks. The future of our children and their lives as adults depend on a full enjoyment of good health in a safe, protective environment, from conception to adolescence and beyond.