The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) provides an unprecedented opportunity to show the importance of health in the development process according to Dr Yasmin von Schirnding, Coordinator for WSSD, World Health Organization, Geneva.
Health is recognised as a key goal of sustainable development in the first principle of the Rio Declaration, which states that: "Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature." The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) therefore provides an unprecedented opportunity to show why health needs to be seen as central to the development process.
WHO is orienting its preparations for the summit around a number of important themes and messages:
Ill-health hampers poverty alleviation and socio-economic development;
Environmental degradation, mismanagement of natural resources and unhealthy consumption patterns/lifestyles impact on health, and on the health of the poor;
Development policies and practices need to take into account current and future impacts on health;
New partnerships and reform measures are needed both inside and outside the health sector.
Key elements of the WHO strategy consist of:
Tracking progress
Documentation is being prepared as part of the global preparatory process within the United Nations system, and within the WHO. It includes thematic reviews, institutional and policy reviews, reports on critical trends and assessments of lessons learned in different areas such as cross-sectoral policy and intervention strategies.
Defining the issues
A number of review and planning meetings have been held by WHO to define issues and policy positions through dialogue with key partners. The events have included a meeting on health and environment in sustainable development planning held in May last year in London; a technical (think-tank) meeting on health and sustainable development held in Oslo, Norway at the end of last year, and an inter-ministerial meeting on health and sustainable development held in Johannesburg, South Africa in January 2002. This last meeting resulted in the Johannesburg Declaration on Health and Sustainable Development. It sets forth a series of resolutions aimed at ensuring a central place for health in sustainable development, and on the agenda of the forthcoming WSSD.
The Johannesburg Declaration and other documents were fed into the second intergovernmental preparatory committee meetings and associated events, and will be further elaborated on at the third PrepCom meeting in New York. The WSSD will also be an item of discussion at the World Health Assembly in May 2002, and further meetings of Health and Environment Ministers are planned in the regions.
Advocacy and awareness-raising
Other activities relate to the debates that will take place prior to and during the WSSD, both in the governmental and non-governmental arenas, as well as in the conference background documents and programmes of action that are being prepared and will be adopted at the WSSD.
Advocacy and awareness-raising is also being undertaken through the development of the WSSD website, production and dissemination of fact sheets, issue/policy briefs on topics related to health and sustainable development, media briefs, presentations to key stakeholders/target groups etc.
WHO is collaborating closely in its preparations with various partners, including NGOs, to ensure that:
valuable experiences (at all levels and in all sectors) in health and sustainable development inform the health inputs being prepared;
health is present and centrally addressed in the numerous NGO events which are taking place in the period leading up to the WSSD, as well as at the WSSD itself. In this respect, WHO is providing health input to the Implementation Conference which will take place in Johannesburg immediately prior to the WSSD (one of the core themes is HIV/AIDS and Public Health), and is also organising and participating in various health-related side events at the PrepComs.
