Media Room Speeches and Statements

Speaking Notes for
the Honourable David Anderson, P.C., M.P.
Minister of the Environment, Government of Canada

at a panel discussion
Health and Environment in the 21st Century:
Priorities and Action Strategies to Secure our Children's Future

World Summit on Sustainable Development
Johannesburg
August 29 2002

Check Against Delivery

OPENING REMARKS

Thank you, Dr. Brundtland for those comments. You have indicated how interrelated health and the environment are. We have a good basis for our panel's discussion.

Let me begin it by thanking all the members of this panel for agreeing to take part in this event. I want to thank our audience for joining us to listen to the discussion.

First, I should introduce myself. I am David Anderson, Canada's Minister of the Environment in Canada and President of the Governing Council for the United Nations Environment Programme.

As Dr. Brundtland noted, the issue today is to assess where we are and where we go from here in regards to the health and environment challenges that affect the lives of all people, and especially children.

I'm looking forward to the analysis we will hear.

Some facts:

A child dies from a waterborne disease every ten seconds. It is estimated that environmental factors are associated with a fifth of all the burden of disease on Earth.

There are many more statistics I could throw out but I think the point is obvious. There is a clear link between the health of our environment and the health of the people who live in that environment.

Being mindful of the time, let's get to it. Let me turn now to introduce my fellow panellists. Since they are people who are most likely well-known to all of you, I will be brief.

Mrs. Carol Bellamy is Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund. Prior to that, she was active in public life and in the legal and financial communities in New York.

Dr. Klaus Toepfer is Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program. He came to the position after years of public service in his native Germany.

Mr. Ian Johnson is Vice President, Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development at the World Bank. He oversees the environment, rural development and social development departments, and heads the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

The Honourable Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is Minister of Health in the South African government. She is a physician who spent many years with the African National Congress outside South Africa during the apartheid years.

Dr. Carlos Santos Burgoa is General Director of Environmental Health in the Mexican Ministry of Health. He has built a significant reputation as an epidemiologist and researcher in environmental health.

Ms. Linda Fisher is Deputy Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. She has had an active career in environmental issues, both in the EPA and the private sector.

Dr. Robert Musil is Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an American organization that represents physicians, nurses, health care professionals and other people with a focus on nuclear disarmament, violence prevention and environmental health.

With that, I will wait my turn to speak as one of the panellists. Each has sworn an oath to speak for about four minutes or so.

With that, let me turn the microphone over to Ms. Bellamy.

PANEL REMARKS PORTION

Thank you, Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang.

Now, consistent with our goals here in Johannesburg, I want to talk about moving forward to deal with the situation of the link between health and the environment.

The need for more effective and integrated approaches, policies and programs is evident. As we saw during the meeting of health and environment ministers from throughout the Americas and the Caribbean earlier this year in Canada's capital, Ottawa, the link between health and the environment is attracting attention.

The challenge for decision-makers is that we often only know about health and environment linkages at a very general level. We need to ensure government departments coordinate their work across the board. Feeding from this is the need for countries to also share information with each other.

Pollutants don't stop at a border. They can go on to affect the health of people who live downstream or downwind in other countries. We need to know which ones have the most serious impacts so we can target bilateral and multilateral efforts, as the international community did with the POPs convention.

Today, I am pleased to announce that Canada is making a $3 million contribution to help address the challenges of linking action on health and action on the environment.

With the active collaboration of the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, we are launching a global initiative called "Strengthening Health and Environment Linkages: From Knowledge to Action."

This initiative will identify, synthesize and apply the knowledge that already exists about the linkages between health and the environment.

It's time to pull the facts together so they can be put to work. It's time to assess how public policies and decision-making processes on health and the environment can be made more integrated and more effective.

Canada's funding will support two phases of work.

First, experts will bring together the existing knowledge on the scientific, technical and socio-economic dimensions of health and environmental linkages. This will be a synthesis of the knowledge to date. It will be designed with the needs of policy-makers and people on the front lines of health and the environment.

We do not want this information to sit on some shelf or rest on some computer somewhere. So, the second phase of the work will be to support strategies to communicate this knowledge and support efforts to assess how capacity of all governments can be improved to ensure information is translated into action.

Our longer-range goals for this initiative are simple — even if they are challenging.

We will know this initiative has succeeded when governments and partners of all kinds draw on a growing body of information to generate concrete solutions that address real environmental problems and real health challenges.

We will know it has succeeded when we have policies and actions that clearly lead to a cleaner environment and better health for people around the world — especially the most vulnerable.

I have been discussing this initiative with colleagues from a number of states. And I am pleased to say that there is substantial interest in expanding the partnership behind the initiative.

With that broader partnership, we can do even more to bring about a more integrated approach to health and the environment — and generate an important outcome for this Summit.

This one initiative will be complemented by many other actions that will help us reach our shared goals on health and environment. For example, Canada's International Development Research Centre will host an International Forum on Ecosystem Approaches to Human Health in Montreal from May 18 to 23, 2003.

The United Nations Environment Programme, the World Health Organization, a number of Government of Canada departments and agencies, and sponsors from around the world are supporting this effort to share knowledge.

Attention from all perspectives is growing and will give us the understanding and the tools to realize our goals for a healthy environment and healthy people.

Thank you.