Principles for EcoHealth Action: Implications of the Health Synthesis Paper, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the Millennium Development Goals. Workshop Group, EcoHealth ONE, Madison, Wisconsin, October 2006

Abstract

The first years of this century have seen significant advances in integrating the many perspectives on what it will take to achieve a healthy and sustainable future. Intense activity among agencies worldwide has produced a stream of reviews of the global condition. These include the combined United States Research Council (1999); a consortium of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), World Bank, and World Resources Institute (2000); the Millennium Development Goals (2000). United Nations Environment Program (2003); the Global Reporting Initiative (2006); and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). Each review has deplored a lack of adequate follow-up action on the implications of previous reports. Continuing concern about the state of the planet and the associated risks to health (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; Corvalen et al., 2005) has increased the challenge to deliver an effective response. That success is possible has been demonstrated in the Montreal protocols, in which United Nations members continually monitor and control their use of chlorofluorocarbons and so slow the disintegration of the planet s ozone layer (United Nations Environment Programme, 1999). Local government authorities agreement to reduce their carbon emissions in the face of global warming is beginning to show results (ICLEI, 2002). Such effective responses are still far from established practice. There is an inability, first, to agree on, and then to implement, protocols controlling global environmental hazards; for instance, the Kyoto protocols for reducing national carbon dioxide emissions have only just established a framework (United Nations Environment Program, 2006). At the local scale, the management of ecosystem resources tends not to take sufficient account of the needs for long-term sustainability (Corvalen et al., 2005). These precedents confirm that there is much yet to be learned on taking action in response to scientific reports on the state of the world. In this essay, we report on a workshop on that theme held at the EcoHealth ONE meeting, in Madison, Wisconsin in October 2006. The workshop reviewed the three initiatives below with the aim of determining how EcoHealth actions can best be guided in the future. One, a master plan has been provided by the suite of eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals, formed from the synthesis of national commitments made separately at conferences and summits during the 1990s Published online: February 7, 2007 Correspondence to: Valerie A. Brown, e-mail: val.brown@anu.edu.au EcoHealth 4, 95–98, 2007 DOI: 10.1007/s10393-007-0082-8