Health Equity: 03/11/12

Sunday, March 11, 2012

[EQ] 21 Issues for the 21st Century - UNEP

21 Issues for the 21st Century

United Nations Environment Programme UNEP – February 2012
Results of the UNEP Foresight Process on Emerging Environmental Issues

Available online PDF file [60p.] at: http://bit.ly/zNKhAV

“….The UNEP Foresight Panel, involving over 20 distinguished scientists from around the world, spent close to a year discussing and consulting with some 400 other scientists and experts globally via an electronic survey.

The goal was to deliver an international consensus and a priority list of the top emerging environmental issues alongside options for action.

Emerging environmental issues were defined as “issues with either a positive or negative global environmental impact that are recognized by the scientific community as very important to human well-being, but not yet receiving adequate attention from the policy community”.

The issues chosen were termed as “emerging” based on newness, which can be the result of: new scientific knowledge; new scales or accelerated rates of impact; heightened level of awareness; and/or new ways of responding to the issue.

This report is the outcome of that process and presents the identified issues titled: 21 Issues for the 21st Century. These issues cut across all major global environmental themes including food production and food security; cities and land use; biodiversity, fresh water and marine; climate change and energy, technology and waste issues.

Meanwhile, another cluster of issues were chosen that essentially cut across sectors and individual themes. These address questions surrounding such issues as the governance required to more effectively tackle 21st century sustainability challenges, including the urgency to bridge the gap between the scientific and policy communities and the relevance of social tipping points to sustainable consumption….”

Content:

Executive Summary

1. Introduction

2. Emerging Themes – 21 Issues for the 21st Century

Cross-cutting Issues

Issue 001 Aligning Governance to the Challenges of Global Sustainability

Issue 002 Transforming Human Capabilities for the 21st Century: Meeting Global Environmental Challenges and Moving Towards a Green Economy

Issue 003 Broken Bridges: Reconnecting Science and Policy

Issue 004 Social Tipping Points? Catalyzing Rapid and Transformative Changes in Human Behaviour towards the Environment

Issue 005 New Concepts for Coping with Creeping Changes and Imminent Thresholds

Issue 006 Coping with Migration Caused by New Aspects of Environmental Change Food, Biodiversity and Land

Issue 007 New Challenges for Ensuring Food Safety and Food Security for 9 Billion People

Issue 008 Beyond Conservation: Integrating Biodiversity across the Environmental and Economic Agendas

Issue 009 Boosting Urban Sustainability and Resilience

Issue 010 The New Rush for Land: Responding to New National and International Pressures Freshwaters and Marine Issues

Issue 011 New Insights on Water-Land Interactions: Shift in the Management Paradigm?

Issue 012 Shortcutting the Degradation of Inland Waters in Developing Countries

Issue 013 Potential Collapse of Oceanic Systems Requires Integrated Ocean Governance

Issue 014 Coastal Ecosystems: Addressing Increasing Pressures with Adaptive Governance Climate Change Issues

Issue 015 New Challenges for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: Managing the Unintended Consequences

Issue 016 Acting on the Signal of Climate Change in the Changing Frequency of Extreme Events

Issue 017 Managing the Impacts of Glacier Retreat Energy, Technology, and Waste Issues

Issue 018 Accelerating the Implementation of Environmentally-Friendly Renewable Energy Systems

Issue 019 Greater Risk than Necessary? The Need for a New Approach for Minimizing Risks of Novel Technologies and Chemicals

Issue 020 Changing the Face of Waste: Solving the Impending Scarcity of Strategic Minerals and Avoiding Electronic Waste

Issue 021 The Environmental Consequences of Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors

Appendix 1 Respondents to Electronic Questionnaire

Appendix 2 Description of the Foresight Process

KMC/2012/SDE
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This message from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO/WHO, is part of an effort to disseminate
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Information Technology - Virtual libraries; Research & Science issues. [DD/ KMC Area]
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[EQ] Tackling Cross-Sectoral Challenges to Advance Health as Part of Foreign Policy

Tackling Cross-Sectoral Challenges to Advance Health as Part of Foreign Policy

A report of the international research initiative:Foreign Policy as Part of Global Health Challenges

Commissioned by the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo, 2012

Miriam Faid
-The initiative is a collaborative venture involving the following institutions: Center for Global Health, Fiocruz, Brazil; University of Oslo, Norway; the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Norway; South African Institute of International Affairs; Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia; Harvard University, USA and the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Oslo.

Available online as PDF [51p.] at: http://bit.ly/wqhGLf

“….This report is based on the general assumption that the integration of global health into foreign policy-making is beneficial for advancing global health goals. This is based on the statement laid down in the 2007 Oslo Declaration.

This view is also reflected in various relevant UN Declarations. Using an exploratory comparative approach the report drraws empirical lessons from three global issues, selected on the basis of their similarities to global health:

Environment as regards climate change and biodiversity and their integration into global trade governance; migration and its integration into global security governance and gender and its emergence into global development governance. Issue linkage and mainstrreaming were used as analytical devices.

From the documentation provided, we derive policy lessons on how to advance health as foreign policy is
1) Government actors need to build greater capacity for managing complex governance strucures.
2) New policy concepts require new substance that can help generate concrete action and changed practices.

Finally, the report suggests new points of analytical entry for further research on global health and foreign policy…”

Content

Report synopsis

1 Introduction

2 Methodology

3 Integrating health into non-health global governance arenas: Opportunities and challenges

4 Learning lessons from cross-sectoral governance challenges

a) The integration of environment into global trade governance

Climate change and its integration into global trade governance

Biodiversity and its integration into global trade governance

b) The integration of migration into global security governance

c) The emergence of gender from global development governance

5 Comparing lessons learned – insights for how to advance health as part of foreign policy

Policy lesson 1: Build capacity to manage complex governance structures

Policy lesson 2: New policy concepts require new strategies to help generate concrete action

Research observation 1: Different actors in the global arena utilize strategies of mainstreaming and issue linkage differently

Research observation 2: Strategies work differently to address horizontal versus vertical interplay

Research observation 3: How do we assess the high-politics vs. low-politics character of a global issue?

Future research lesson 1: How can foreign policy areas open up to global health?

Future research lesson 2: Lack of knowledge on policy implementation, outcomes and impact

6 Bibliography

KMC/2012/AD
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* * *
This message from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO/WHO, is part of an effort to disseminate
information Related to: Equity; Health inequality; Socioeconomic inequality in health; Socioeconomic
health differentials; Gender; Violence; Poverty; Health Economics; Health Legislation; Ethnicity; Ethics;
Information Technology - Virtual libraries; Research & Science issues. [DD/ KMC Area]
Washington DC USA

Thank you.

[EQ] Swiss Health Foreign Policy

Swiss Health Foreign Policy

Federal Department of Foreign Affairs FDFA
The Federal Authorities of the Swiss Confederation – March 2012

This policy establishes priorities and defines cooperation between all administrative units in matters of global health policy

Available online PDF [31p.] at: http://bit.ly/ygx58i

“…….As a result of globalization, health issues are becoming increasingly important at the inter-national level. A growing interdependence between domestic and health foreign policy is apparent worldwide. Health has also become a topic of Switzerland's foreign policy and therefore a focused and multisectoral approach is required in order to ensure that funda-mental Swiss values such as human rights, the rule of law and democracy are guaranteed, and also that the interests of a wide variety of Swiss actors can be taken into account.

Underlying Swiss Health Foreign Policy are all the country's international concerns relating to health – with neighbouring countries, in European policy, on the subject of global public goods, or in development policy.

The policy is based on a concept of global health which – in contrast to the concept of international health that prevailed up to the turn of the century, focusing primarily on the health problems of the least developed countries – is concerned with strategies at the global level. Accordingly, prime responsibility rests with all countries, and not only – as in the conception of international health – with donor and beneficiary countries.

The present Swiss Health Foreign Policy, a revised version of the 2006 Agreement on Health Foreign Policy Objectives, is the result of a consultation procedure involving the relevant federal authorities and interested parties from civil society, the private sector, re-search, Swiss health system actors and the Swiss Conference of the Cantonal Ministers of Public Health. It was approved by the Federal Council on 09 March 2012, has a medium-term perspective and is to be reviewed as required, but after six years at the latest. ……”

Contents

1 Introduction

2 Review of Swiss Health Foreign Policy

3 Challenges

4 Principles and values

5 Actors

6 Areas of interest

7 Objectives of Swiss Health Foreign Policy

8 Instruments for enhancing coordination and coherence

9 Resources

10 Annexes

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* * *
This message from the Pan American Health Organization, PAHO/WHO, is part of an effort to disseminate
information Related to: Equity; Health inequality; Socioeconomic inequality in health; Socioeconomic
health differentials; Gender; Violence; Poverty; Health Economics; Health Legislation; Ethnicity; Ethics;
Information Technology - Virtual libraries; Research & Science issues. [DD/ KMC Area]
Washington DC USA

Thank you.