On the way to Parma 2010: report from thematic meetings on healthy environments, Luxembourg
The meeting of the European Environment and Health Committee (EEHC) and Thematic meeting on Healthy Environments took place in Luxembourg on 27-29 January 2009
04.02.2009 |Iulia Trombitcaia
The meeting of the European Environment and Health Committee (EEHC) and Thematic meeting on Healthy Environments took place in Luxembourg on 27-29 January 2009, hosted by the Ministry of Health of Luxembourg and the European Commission, Directorate-General for Health and Consumers.
Sascha Gabizon (executive director of WECF Women in Europe for a Common Future, and Coordinator of the Environment and Health Issue Group at the European ECO-Forum) as well as Iulia Trombitcaia (Eco-Accord Russia) represented the European ECO Forum at these meetings. Nita Chaudhuri and Sonja Haider of WECF participated in the Thematic Meeting.
The EEHC meeting discussed the programme for the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health (Parma-2010), the documentation for Parma-2010, the draft Ministerial Declaration and the status of the Strategy on climate change. The EEHC meeting was attended by the following EEHC members: the Netherlands, Norway, Uzbekistan, Italy, Finland, Moldova, Estonia, Cyprus, the European Commission, HEAL, ECO-Forum, Youth, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, REC, EEA, and OECD.
The Thematic Meeting on Healthy Environments followed the EEHC meeting and was open to all WHO-Europe 53 Member States. The Thematic Meeting focused on air quality, obesity and injuries. It addressed the situation in the region, implementation of CEHAPE in these areas and recommended how these areas should be reflected in the Ministerial Declaration. In the second day, representatives of all Member States discussed, section by section, the text of the Ministerial Declaration.
PROGRAMME OF THE MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE
The EEHC approved the overall structure of the programme for Parma-2010. The topics of the sessions with stay as they are, and from now on, the programme will be deepened with content and concrete discussion items for each session. The programme is for 3 days. The exact dates are not fixed yet (last week of February or first week of March 2010), and Italy suggests to have the conference Thursday to Saturday, instead of Wednesday to Friday. WECF worries that ministers will not come to a conference during the weekend.
ROUNDTABLE AND CEHAPE AWARDS
The EEHC supported the proposal for the round-table to be organized by ECO-Forum and HEAL (explicit support came from Finland, WBCSD, REC, Norway, Youth). The secretariat explained that the session named “Involving new stakeholders” is an appropriate place for the round-table, and that we should cooperate with other stakeholders in bringing them into preparations as well. CEHAPE Awards were supported by Norway and Youth; however, the secretariat (WHO) raised some concerns about this initiative. However quite many governments feel that CEHAPE Awards is a very useful initiative.
MINISTERIAL DECLARATION
Eco-Forum (and WECF) are very pleased that our proposal, to include four school focused targets (one for each RPG) into the draft ministerial declaration, was accepted. Denmark supported the idea of school focused actions and invited us to come up with a proposal. The next day, the proposal was supported, with some changes, by Denmark, Cyprus, Bulgaria, France, Uzbekistan, Moldova, the European Commission and the REC (see at http://www.eco-forum.org/documents/DraftDecl-SchoolSpecificProposals.doc). Italy supported concrete outcomes, whether targets or commitments.
ECO-Forum also proposed stronger wordings with regard to assessment of progress, precautionary principle, exposures at early age and mixture effect of chemicals, asbestos, mentioning existing good funded processes in relation to individual RPGs, impact of global crises and other issues. Norway made a very strong statement outlining its practice with supporting children’s participation in making policies, in response to member states which did not see opportunities for children’s participation in decision-making. Cyprus strongly urged to make clear commitments not to sacrifice children’s health in global trade, and to include wordings on environmental tobacco smoke.
WECF is glad that this ministerial declaration, which looked as if it would bring no new commitments, might now obtain some good content and create new frameworks for action in those areas where this process can bring added value, namely in working with other ministries and sectors on improving environmental health for children, with a focus on schools, and addressing some great forgotten environmental health problems such as the widespread use of asbestos in the EECCA region, and the problems with hazardous chemicals, in particular hormone disrupting chemicals, in consumer and children’s products in relationship to global trade.
CLIMATE DOCUMENT
The hardest issue at the meeting was the status of the so called Strategy on climate change (“Protecting health in an environment challenged by climate change: a European Strategy”). The initiative is led by the United Kingdom. In Paris in December 2008 the countries did not agree what will be the status of the Strategy. The options included 1) Strategy as a separate committal document 2) a policy brief and with several commitments on climate in the ministerial declaration. The drafting of the Strategy started with a small meeting in Rome in January 2009, where a very good 8 pages draft was produced.
At the EEHC meeting on 27 January 2009, the secretariat, supported by a number of member states including Italy, recommended that the Strategy would not be a negotiated document, and that commitments on climate would be included in the ministerial declaration. The main reasoning was that the content of the Strategy depends a lot from the outcomes of UNFCCC COP-15. At the Thematic Meeting, discussion took place in presence of all member states. Unfortunately, it was only HEAL, ECO-Forum, Denmark, United Kingdom, and Germany who defended a separate negotiated document. The Thematic Meeting decided not to have a separate negotiated document.
WECF believes that is very much a lost opportunity, currently the Parma Ministerial meeting is not identified with any new topic, as Budapest 2004 was identified with CEHAPE, and London with the Water and Health protocol - it could have been health and climate change. Currently, it remains to be seen what interest Ministers will find in coming to Parma.
NEXT MEETINGS
The next meetings include Third High Level Meeting (27-29 April, Bonn) and Third Meeting of the Drafting Group on the Conference Declaration (mid-June 2009, Andorra). The future of the “Environment and Health” process will be discussed in Bonn, with the text developed by the Drafting Group on the Conference Declaration. A second policy dialogue of NIS countries in Tajikistan (June 2009) and a second meeting of SEE states should take place in Belgrade, between the Bonn and Andorra meetings. It is expected that the section on NIS/SEE needs in the ministerial declaration will come out of these meetings.
For more information please contact:
Sascha Gabizon, e-mail: sascha.gabizon@wecf.eu
Iulia Trombitcaia, e-mail: iutrombitcaia@hotmail.com
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