The meeting of the European Environment and Health Committee (EEHC) and
Thematic meeting on Healthy Environments took place in Luxembourg on 27-29
January 2009, hosted by the Ministry of Health of Luxembourg and the
European Commission, Directorate-General for Health and Consumers. Sascha
Gabizon (Women in Europe for a Common Future, Coordinator of the Environment
and Health Issue Group at the European ECO-Forum) and Iulia Trombitcaia (Eco-Accord
Russia) represented the European ECO Forum at these meetings.
The EEHC meeting discussed the programme for the Fifth Ministerial
Conference on Environment and Health (Parma-2010), the documentation for
Parma-2010, the draft Ministerial Declaration and the status of the Strategy
on climate change. The EEHC meeting was attended by the following EEHC
members: the Netherlands, Norway, Uzbekistan, Italy, Finland, Moldova,
Estonia, Cyprus, the European Commission, HEAL, European ECO-Forum, Youth,
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, REC, EEA, and OECD.
The Thematic Meeting on Healthy Environments followed the EEHC meeting and
was open to all WHO-Europe 53 Member States. The Thematic Meeting focused on
air quality, obesity and injuries. It addressed the situation in the region,
implementation of the Children's Environment and Health Action Plan for
Europe (CEHAPE) in these areas and recommended how these areas should be
reflected in the Ministerial Declaration. In the second day, representatives
of all Member States discussed, section by section, the text of the
Ministerial Declaration.
MINISTERIAL DECLARATION
European ECO-Forum’s proposal, to include four school focused targets (one
for each Regional Priority Goal) into the draft ministerial declaration, was
accepted. Denmark supported the idea of school focused actions and invited
us to come up with a proposal. The next day, the proposal was supported,
with some changes, by Denmark, Cyprus, Bulgaria, France, Uzbekistan, Moldova,
the European Commission and the REC (see at http://www.eco-forum.org/documents/DraftDecl-SchoolSpecificProposals.doc).
Italy supported concrete outcomes, whether targets or commitments.
European ECO-Forum also proposed stronger wordings with regard to assessment
of progress, precautionary principle, exposures at early age and mixture
effect of chemicals, asbestos, mentioning existing good funded processes in
relation to individual RPGs, impact of global crises and other issues.
Norway made a very strong statement outlining its practice with supporting
children’s participation in making policies, in response to member states
which did not see opportunities for children’s participation in
decision-making. Cyprus strongly urged to make clear commitments not to
sacrifice children’s health in global trade, and to include wordings on
environmental tobacco smoke.
Therefore, the ministerial declaration might now obtain some good content
and create new frameworks for action in those areas where this process can
bring added value, namely in working with other ministries and sectors on
improving environmental health for children, with a focus on schools, and
addressing some great forgotten environmental health problems such as the
widespread use of asbestos in the EECCA region, and the problems with
hazardous chemicals, in particular hormone disrupting chemicals, in consumer
and children’s products in relationship to global trade.
CLIMATE DOCUMENT
The hardest issue at the meeting was the status of the so called Strategy on
climate change (“Protecting health in an environment challenged by climate
change: a European Strategy”). The initiative is led by the United Kingdom.
In Paris in December 2008 the countries did not agree what will be the
status of the Strategy. The options included 1) Strategy as a separate
committal document 2) a policy brief and with several commitments on climate
in the ministerial declaration. The drafting of the Strategy started with a
small meeting in Rome in January 2009, which prepared a very good first
draft.
At the EEHC meeting on 27 January 2009, the secretariat, supported by a
number of member states including Italy, recommended that the Strategy would
not be a negotiated document, and that commitments on climate would be
included in the ministerial declaration. The main reasoning was that the
content of the Strategy depends a lot from the outcomes of UNFCCC COP-15. At
the Thematic Meeting, discussion took place in presence of all member states.
Unfortunately, it was only HEAL, ECO-Forum, Denmark, United Kingdom, and
Germany who defended a separate negotiated document. The Thematic Meeting
decided not to have a separate negotiated document.
PROGRAMME OF THE MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE
The EEHC approved the overall structure of the programme for Parma-2010. The
topics of the sessions with stay as they are, and from now on, the programme
will be deepened with content and concrete discussion items for each session.
The programme is for 3 days. The exact dates are not fixed yet (last week of
February or first week of March 2010), and Italy suggests to have the
conference Thursday to Saturday, instead of Wednesday to Friday.
ROUNDTABLE AND CEHAPE AWARDS
The EEHC supported the proposal for the round-table to be organized by
European ECO-Forum and HEAL (explicit support came from Finland, WBCSD, REC,
Norway, Youth). The secretariat explained that the session named “Involving
new stakeholders” is an appropriate place for the round-table. ECO-Forum and
HEAL should cooperate with EEHC in developing the programme, and with other
stakeholders in bringing them into preparations as well. ECO-Forum and HEAL
will come to the Third Preparatory Meeting in Bonn (end of April 2009) with
proposed programme for the round-table. At the EEHC meeting, CEHAPE Awards
were supported by Norway and Youth. ECO-Forum and HEAL will consider
revising the idea to make it acceptable for all.
NEXT MEETINGS
The next meetings include Third High Level Meeting (27-29 April, Bonn) and
Third Meeting of the Drafting Group on the Conference Declaration (mid-June
2009, Andorra). The future of the “Environment and Health” process will be
discussed in Bonn, with the text developed by the Drafting Group on the
Conference Declaration. A second policy dialogue of NIS countries in
Tajikistan (June 2009) and a second meeting of SEE states should take place
in Belgrade, between the Bonn and Andorra meetings. It is expected that the
section on NIS/SEE needs in the ministerial declaration will come out of
these meetings.
For more information please contact:
Iulia Trombitcaia
Eco-Accord Center
E-mail: iutrombitcaia@hotmail.com
Sascha Gabizon
Women in Europe for a Common Future
Coordinator of the Environment and Health Issue Group at the European
ECO-Forum
E-mail: sascha.gabizon@wecf.eu
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