Addressing Health and Environment Concerns in Sustainable Development with Special Reference to Participatory Planning Initiatives such as Healthy Cities

ABSTRACT

With massive urbanization occurring worldwide, environment and health concerns have reached near-crisis dimensions in many cities throughout the world. Whilst age-old environmental health hazards such as unsafe food and water, microbiological contamination of the environment, overall poor sanitation, and inadequate environmental hygiene are today still prevalent, new environment and development problems have emerged, some of which appear to threaten the entire ecosystem.

Environment and health problems today are complex, multidisciplinary in nature, interrelated, and often ill-defined with uncertain solutions. New and innovative approaches are needed to tackle such problems in the future, with development, environment, and health concerns addressed together in a coordinated and integrated way. The total environment must be supportive of health development.

This paper highlights some of the key milestones in the recent history of the environment and public health fields, which have been instrumental in the development of more integrated approaches to addressing crosscutting environment and health problems, with particular emphasis placed on initiatives such as Agenda 21. It then discusses the concept and philosophy of the successful “Healthy Cities” project, which is an urban health and development project initiated by the World Health Organization to address more effectively health and environment issues at the local level. Other strategies such as the “Sustainable Cities” initiative are also mentioned. Finally, attention is drawn to some of the successes that have been achieved through participatory planning initiatives, and the implications for implementation in respect to institutional restructuring, human resource needs, and information systems are highlighted.