Thu, Feb 21, 2013
Report Shows Good Policies for Addressing
Environmental Challenges Affecting Human
Health, But Weak Implementation
Diarrhoea, respiratory infections and malaria
account for 60 per cent of known environmental
health impacts in Africa.
Nairobi, 21 February
2012 - Africa's leaders should put implementing
environment and health issues at the top
of their national and continent-wide policies
if growing challenges such as air pollution,
vector-borne diseases and chemical exposure
are to be addressed, according to a new
report compiled by the UN Environment Programme
(UNEP) released today.
African Environment
Outlook-3 (AEO-3), commissioned by the African
Ministerial Conference on the Environment
(AMCEN), places special focus on links between
environment and health, pointing to the
statistic that environmental risks contribute
28 per cent of Africa's disease burden.
Diarrhoea, respiratory infections and malaria
account for 60 per cent of known environmental
health impacts in Africa.
UNEP in Africa
Africa Environment Outlook 3 French
In particular, particulate matter - the
air pollutant with greatest impact on human
health - is of great concern in poor rural
areas, where little access to cleaner stoves
and fuels causes significant health impacts
through indoor pollution. Air pollution
in Africa can be 10 to 30 times higher than
World Health Organization limits
Other issues highlighted
that have a major impact include the degradation
of health-promoting goods and services such
as food and medicinal plants made possible
by land and marine biodiversity. For example,
80 per cent of Africa's rural population
depends on traditional medicines harvested
from nature.
The report also spotlights
a lack of capacity to deal with the growing
effects of climate change; inadequate water,
sanitation and hygiene - in 2010, only 60
per cent of the sub-Saharan Africa population
had access to safe water; and poor waste
disposal practices.
The AEO-3 Summary for
Policy Makers is intended to provide information
that can assist AMCEN member countries strengthen
capacity for policy making and advocacy
on national, regional and global levels.
"Africa's population
is growing at the fastest rate in the world
and its economy is expanding at a commensurate
rate, yet not enough focus has been placed
on the role environmental concerns play
in ensuring the wellbeing of this expanding,
dynamic continent's citizens," said
UNEP Executive Director and UN Under-Secretary
General Achim Steiner.
"Africa is moving
into a new phase that could see the continent
become a major player in the transition
to a global inclusive Green Economy, but
to do that it needs a healthy population
with guaranteed access to well-managed natural
resources," he added. "AEO-3 gives
policy makers a clear pathway to a sustainable
and healthy future by focusing on the areas
that need urgent attention, showing how
to remove barriers to policy implementation,
and highlighting new policies."
The report highlights
emerging issues and assesses trends related
to environmental change and the consequences
for human health in the region, and proposes
new policy directions for enabling transformative
changes for a sustainable future.
In addition, the report
found that many good policies to address
environmental change already exist but are
hampered by weak implementation. However,
the AEO-3 assessment points to a number
of actions, which if adequately taken can
make promising policies work effectively.
"As this report
highlights, African governments are all
too aware of the challenges facing the continent
in terms of environmental impacts on human
health. There are significant on-going efforts
to combat these challenges, including putting
in place many relevant policies," said
H.E. Terezya Huvisa, Minister of State -
Environment of the United Republic of Tanzania
and President of AMCEN.
"However, these
policies must be strongly implemented to
have an impact, and enforcement mechanisms
should be put in place and strengthened
to reduce the negative consequences,"
she added. "If the recommendations
in AEO-3 are followed, our citizens can
look forward to healthier, and ultimately
more productive, lives."
Key Messages and Policy
Recommendations
Specifically, the report
seeks to deliver key messages and policy
recommendations, including:
Environmental and health
issues deserve priority consideration in
national development.
Indoor and outdoor air pollution, unhygienic
or unsafe food, inadequate waste disposal,
absent or unsafe vector control and exposure
to chemicals are key environmental health
hazards in most African countries.
Effective reduction
of indoor air pollution requires rethinking
national electrification programmes and
accelerating access to improved technologies
and alternative sources of cleaner energy.
Measures such as Community
Based Natural Resources Management and Payment
for Ecosystem Services should be scaled-up
to conserve biodiversity, which provides
services such as food and medicinal plants
and thus promotes human health.
Chemicals bring benefits
in many sectors, but if improperly handled
can result in environmental pollution and
serious risks to human health. Recommended
policy directions include strengthening
the knowledge and evidence base of health
risks; accelerating domestication and implementation
of the Basel, Stockholm and Bamako Conventions;
and including issues relating to e-waste
in national legislation.
Climate change and variability
impact human health because of Africa's
underdeveloped capacity to cope with the
negative impacts. Policy options include
integrating climate-related scientific findings
into decision making; building adaptive
capacity; and strengthening early warning
systems, preparedness and response.
Coastal and marine resources
contribute to human health and need to be
conserved and used sustainably. In addition
to scaling up Integrated Coastal Zone Management,
there is need for effective surveillance
in order to protect the coastal and marine
environment from degradation and pollution.
Access to safe water
and adequate sanitation is vital to human
health and therefore requires action to
improve infrastructure; reduce pollution
of available water sources; and address
poor hygiene.
Assessing the suitability
of land-use changes, regulating large-scale
land acquisition, and promoting technologies
that enhance land productivity and more-efficient
water use can promote sustainable land management
and boost food and nutrition security.
Adequate adaptation
to domestic and global uncertainties, which
affect human health, can benefit from scenario
analyses that emphasize the various ways
in which environmental management may impact
human health well into the future and make
it possible to make flexible long-term plans.
Options to improve weak
implementation of existing policies include:
adequate data and information systems; stakeholder
engagement; institutional mechanisms to
ensure alignment and collaboration; capacity
development of all stakeholders; and clear
implementation roadmaps with realistic targets
and funding mechanism.
The State of the Environment
The AEO-3 built the
above messages and recommendations from
the latest data available on air quality,
biodiversity, chemicals and waste, climate
change, freshwater and sanitation and land.
This existing data on linkages between health
and the environment in Africa needs to be
brought up to date.
The data available includes
the following facts and figures:
Air quality
The low combustion efficiency
of solid fuels used for cooking and heating
in rural Africa and poor ventilation often
results in concentrations of indoor air
pollution 10-30 times over World Health
Organization limits.
Outdoor air pollution
is estimated to kill 800,000 people globally
each year, mainly in urban areas; 40,000
of these deaths occur in Africa.
In Angola, 6.9 per cent
of the national disease burden is attributable
to solid fuel use; in Malawi, the figure
is 5.2 per cent.
Biodiversity
Africa's biological
diversity supports human health as a major
source of food, medicines and ecosystem
services: 80 per cent of Africa's rural
population depends on traditional medicine.
In Zimbabwe, 50 species of mushrooms, 25
species of fruit and 50 species of leafy
vegetables are harvested from the wild.
Uncontrolled exploitation
and fragmentation of natural habitats threaten
biodiversity of medicinal and food security
value. Over-harvesting and climate change
also contribute to biodiversity degradation
and imbalances in predator-prey relationships
that may create conditions for disease outbreak.
Changes or disturbance
in habitats characterized by damming, destruction
of coral reefs through dynamite fishing,
and the conversion of natural forests and
grasslands into arable agriculture also
create conditions that may favour disease
vectors.
Chemicals and Waste
Health-related risks
in Africa come from agrochemicals, persistent
organic pollutants (POPs), chemical stockpiles,
e-Waste and petroleum waste.
In Ivory Coast, the
National Centre for Agronomical Research
in Abidjan estimates that 65 per cent of
the illnesses suffered by market gardeners,
cotton growers, mango producers and consumers
are due to pesticides.
The Ogoni community
in the Niger Delta in Nigeria is exposed
to petroleum hydrocarbons in outdoor air
and drinking water, sometimes at elevated
concentrations. Furthermore, community members
at Nisisioken Ogale are drinking water from
wells that are contaminated with benzene,
a known carcinogen, at levels over 900 times
above WHO limits.
Climate change
The Fourth Assessment
of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate
Change found that Africa is warming faster
than the global average, and temperature
could increase by as much as 3 to 4°C
average this century. This makes climate
change a major challenge for health and
economy in Africa as climate-sensitive diseases
are likely to spread with warming. These
include Rift Valley Fever, which affects
both people and livestock; cholera, associated
with floods; Meningitis, associated with
prolonged warming; and malaria, which warming
has enabled the emergence of in hitherto
unexposed areas such as the highlands of
Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. The effects
of warming in Africa are also likely to
translate into reductions in crop yields
and livestock productivity, shortages of
drinking water, and displacement of people
in some areas.
Freshwater and sanitation
Human-induced pollution
in Africa comes from untreated municipal
wastewater effluents, seepage to natural
wells and springs from latrines, nitrate
pollution of groundwater by fertilizers,
cadmium-rich water releases from phosphates
mines, and eutrophication of dam reservoirs
as a result of organic pollution.
The majority of Africa's
population still lacks safe drinking water,
with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for about
a third or 330 million of the 884 million
people who have no access worldwide.
Although by 2010 the
actual number of people using improved drinking
water sources had increased by 11 per cent
since 11000, only 60 per cent of the sub-Saharan
Africa population had access to safe water.
Northern Africa is the
only sub-region that has surpassed the Millennium
Development Goal sanitation targets, with
access coverage increasing from 72 per cent
in 11000 to 89 per cent in 2008.
Water scarcity is projected
to increase from 47 per cent in 2000 to
65 per cent in 2025.
Land
By sustainably using
land, people can enhance their health through
increased access to the various ecosystem
services, yet Africa suffers considerable
land degradation, with severe consequences
for agricultural production, nutrition and
human health.
In a period covering
over 50 years from 1950, soils in about
0.5 million square kilometres were degraded.
Over 60 per cent of the population in Burkina
Faso, Ethiopia, Lesotho and Mali live on
degraded land.
Changes in land use
can also change the ecology of human diseases,
thereby making people more vulnerable to
infections. Indirect health effects of land
degradation include the spread of infectious
diseases as populations migrate.
Africa is estimated
to contribute 70 per cent of the global
land leased or purchased to produce agricultural
crops for food and for bio-fuels, with adverse
impacts on local food security and livelihoods.
Notes to Editors
The Africa Environment
Outlook (AEO) is a tool of the African Ministerial
Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) for
monitoring environmental management in Africa.
It provides a framework for environmental
reporting at the national and sub-regional
levels. Its ultimate aim is to enable AMCEN's
member countries to institute environmental
management policies and programmes for the
sustainable future of the continent. The
AMCEN Secretariat partners with the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), through
its Regional Office for Africa (ROA) and
the Division of Early Warning and Assessment
(DEWA), in producing the AEO report.