ICSU’s Urban Health and Wellbeing Programme highlights importance of health issues at UNEP General Assembly

Environmental issues have moved from the margins to the centre of the world’s sustainable development agenda. With the same level of global prominence as issues such as peace, poverty, health, security, finance and trade – the health impacts of a changing environment will be debated and discussed at UNEA.

ICSU’s Urban Health and Wellbeing side event will highlight the linkages between environmental quality and human health and well-being – providing a clear framework for integrated decision making to enact the knowledge across multiple sectors. “Health for all policies” and “all policies for health” needs to be promoted among developed and less developed countries.

This side event aims to outline a framework for organizing health targets and priorities across policies in changing environments, particularly for less developed countries and cities. The event will be an opportunity to draw attention to health as a precondition for, and outcome and indicator of, sustainable development.

The side event will take place in Conference Room 14 from 16:00 – 17:00hrs and will be chaired by Prof. Tony Capon, Director of the UNU International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH). Speakers include Sir Prof. Andy Haines of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; Dr. Monika MacDevette, Deputy Director of the Division of Environmental Policy Implementation (DEPI) at UNEP; and Dr. Franz Gatzweiler, Executive Director of the ICSU-IAP-UNU Programme: Urban Health and Wellbeing: a Systems approach.