Fifth Ministerial Conference
on Environment and Health
“Protecting children’s health in a
changing environment”
Parma, Italy, 10–12 March 2010
EUR/55934/5.1 Rev. 2
11 March 2010
100604
Original: English
Parma Declaration on Environment and Health
1. We the Ministers and Representatives of Member States in the European Region
of the World Health Organization (WHO) responsible for health and the environment,
together with the WHO Regional Director for Europe, in the presence of the European
Commissioners for Health and Consumer Policy and for the Environment, the Executive
Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the
Regional Director for Europe of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
have gathered in Parma, Italy from 10 to 12 March 2010 to face the key environment
and health challenges of our time.
2. Building on the foundations laid in the European Environment and Health Process
to date, we will intensify our efforts to implement the commitments made through
previous WHO ministerial conferences, especially those set out in the Children’s
Environment and Health Action Plan for Europe (CEHAPE).
3. We are committed to act on the key environment and health challenges of our
time. These include:
(a) the health and environmental impacts of climate change and related policies;
(b) the health risks to children and other vulnerable groups posed by poor
environmental, working and living conditions (especially the lack of water
and sanitation);
(c) socioeconomic and gender inequalities in the human environment and
health, amplified by the financial crisis;
(d) the burden of noncommunicable diseases, in particular to the extent that it
can be reduced through adequate policies in areas such as urban
development, transport, food safety and nutrition, and living and working
environments;
(e) concerns raised by persistent, endocrine-disrupting and bio-accumulating
harmful chemicals and (nano)particles; and by novel and emerging issues;
and
(f) insufficient resources in parts of the WHO European Region.
Conference Secretariat
W ORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION • REGIONAL OFFICE FOR EUROPE
Scherfigsvej 8, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark Telephone: +45 39 17 12 52/16 06 Fax: +45 39 17 18 78/18 92
E-mail: [email protected] World Wide Web address: http://www.euro.who.int/parma2010
EUR/55934/5.1 Rev.2
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4. We will address these challenges by setting up or strengthening existing
mechanisms or structures that can ensure effective implementation, promote local
actions and ensure active participation in the European Environment and Health
Process. Recognizing that economic arguments are increasingly critical to develop
sound policies, we will pay special attention to fostering strategic partnerships and
networks, so that environment and health issues are better integrated across the policies
of all sectors. We call on these sectors and relevant organizations to work with us more
closely to ensure healthy environments.
5. We will intensify efforts to develop, improve and implement health and
environmental legislation and to continue health system reforms as necessary,
particularly in the newly independent states and countries of south-eastern Europe,
aimed at streamlining, upgrading and strengthening the performance of public health
and environmental services.
6. We will ensure that youth participation is facilitated across all Member States at
both national and international levels by providing them with assistance, resources and
the training required for meaningful and sustainable involvement in all aspects of the
process.
7. We will advocate for investing in sustainable and environmentally friendly and
health-promoting technologies, emphasizing the opportunities created by these
activities, such as energy-efficient health services and green jobs.
8. We encourage international stakeholders, including international financial
institutions, and the European Commission to offer further scientific, political, technical
and financial assistance to help establish effective mechanisms and strengthen capacities
to reduce exposures to environmental hazards and the resulting health impacts in the
Region.
9. We call upon the WHO Regional Office for Europe, the European Commission,
UNECE, UNEP and all other partners to strengthen their collaboration to ensure
progress in environment and health implementation in the WHO European Region.
10. We endorse and will implement the “Commitment to act” and the goals and
targets included therein. That document is an integral part of this Declaration.
11. We endorse the institutional framework described in the “The European
Environment and Health Process (2010–2016): Institutional framework”. We commend
a stronger political role for the European Environment and Health Ministerial Board and
we will follow up on implementation through the Environment and Health Task Force
and the Ministerial Board will report annually to the WHO Regional Committee for
Europe and the UNECE Committee on Environmental Policy.
12. We agree to meet again at the Sixth European Ministerial Conference on
Environment and Health in 2016.
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13. We the Minister of Health and the Minister of the Environment, Land and Sea of
Italy, on behalf of all the ministers of health and environment in the European Region of
WHO, together with the WHO Regional Director for Europe and in the presence of the
European Commissioners for Health and the Environment, the Executive Secretary of
UNECE and other partners, hereby fully adopt the commitments made in this
Declaration.
Fifth Ministerial Conference
on Environment and Health
“Protecting children’s health in a
changing environment”
Parma, Italy, 10–12 March 2010
EUR/55934/5.2 Rev 2
11 March 2010
100105
Original: English
Commitment to Act
Building on the foundations laid in the European Environment and Health Process to
date, including in particular the Fourth Ministerial Conference on Environment and
Health and the Intergovernmental Mid-term Review held in Vienna in June 2007, we
will increase our efforts to address the key environment and health challenges of our
time, including climate change, emerging issues and the effects of the economic crisis,
and we reaffirm our commitment to work together across sectors.
We recognize established political processes that ensure healthy environments for
children, including all related United Nations processes, other WHO ministerial
conferences as well as European Union legislation and the 2009 deliberations of the
Group of Eight industrialized nations (G8), as tools for further implementation.1
We take particular note of the Declaration of the Sixth Ministerial Conference
“Environment for Europe”, of WHO’s Tallinn Charter on Health Systems, Health and
Wealth2 and of the European Union Declaration on Health in All Policies.
A. Protecting children’s health
1. We reconfirm our commitment to prioritized actions under the regional priority goals
(RPGs) in the Children’s Environment and Health Action Plan for Europe (CEHAPE) as
indicated below. We will strive to attain the targets in the RPGs as set out below.
Regional Priority Goal 1 Ensuring public health by improving access to safe
water and sanitation
1
Turkey declares that it does not consider itself bound by the commitments and undertakings in the
paragraphs related to international treaties, conventions or protocols to which it is not a contracting party,
namely the Protocol on Water and Health to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of
Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes and the Protocols to the 1979 Convention on Long-
Range Transboundary Air Pollution except the 1984 Protocol on Long-Term Financing of the
Cooperative Programme for Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long-range Transmission of Air Pollutants
in Europe.
2
Within the political and institutional framework of each country, a health system is the ensemble of all
public and private organizations, institutions and resources mandated to improve maintain or restore
health. Health systems encompass both personal and population services, as well as activities to influence
the policies and actions of other sectors to address the social, environmental and economic determinants
of health.
Conference Secretariat
W ORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION • REGIONAL OFFICE FOR EUROPE
Scherfigsvej 8, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark Telephone: +45 39 17 12 52/16 06 Fax: +45 39 17 18 78/18 92
E-mail: [email protected] World Wide Web address: http://www.euro.who.int/parma2010
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i. We will take advantage of the approach and provisions of the Protocol on
Water and Health3 as a rationale and progressive tool to develop integrated
policies on water resource management and health, addressing the
challenges to safe water services posed by climate change, with clear targets
and objectives, working in partnership with all concerned sectors.
ii. We will strive to provide each child with access to safe water and sanitation
in homes, child care centres, kindergartens, schools, health care institutions
and public recreational water settings by 2020, and to revitalize hygiene
practices.
Regional Priority Goal 2 Addressing obesity and injuries through safe
environments, physical activity and healthy diet
i. We will implement the relevant parts of the commitments set out in the
Amsterdam Declaration of the Third High-Level Meeting of the Transport
Health and Environment Pan-European Programme (THE PEP).
ii. We will integrate the needs of children into the planning and design of
settlements, housing, health care institutions, mobility plans and transport
infrastructure. To this end we will use health, environment and strategic
impact assessments and we will develop and adapt the relevant regulations,
policies and guidelines, and implement the necessary measures.
iii. We will work in partnership with local, regional and national authorities to
advocate for actions to counteract the adverse effects of urban sprawl that
cause socioeconomic, health and environmental consequences.
iv. We aim to provide each child by 2020 with access to healthy and safe
environments and settings of daily life in which they can walk and cycle to
kindergartens and schools, and to green spaces in which to play and
undertake physical activity. In so doing, we intend to prevent injuries by
implementing effective measures and promoting product safety.
v. We will implement the WHO European Action Plan for Food and Nutrition
Policy (2007–2012), in particular by improving the nutritional quality of
school meals, and support local food production and consumption, where it
can reduce environmental and health impacts.
Regional Priority Goal 3 Preventing disease through improved outdoor and
indoor air quality
i. We will take advantage of the approach and provisions of the protocols to
the 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution and we
will support their revision, where necessary. We will continue and enhance
our efforts to decrease the incidence of acute and chronic respiratory
diseases through reduction of exposure to ultrafine particles and other
particulate matter, especially from industry, transport and domestic
combustion, as well as ground-level ozone, in line with WHO’s air quality
guidelines. We will strengthen monitoring, control and information
3
Protocol on Water and Health to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary
Watercourses and International Lakes.
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programmes, including those related to fuels used in transport and
households.
ii. We will develop appropriate cross-sectoral policies and regulations capable
of making a strategic difference in order to reduce indoor pollution, and we
will provide incentives and opportunities to ensure that citizens have access
to sustainable, clean and healthy energy solutions in homes and public
places.
iii. We aim to provide each child with a healthy indoor environment in child
care facilities, kindergartens, schools and public recreational settings,
implementing WHO’s indoor air quality guidelines and, as guided by the
Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, ensuring that these
environments are tobacco smoke-free by 2015.
Regional Priority Goal 4 Preventing disease arising from chemical, biological
and physical environments
i. We will take advantage of the approach and provisions of relevant
international agreements.4 We will contribute to the Strategic Approach to
International Chemicals Management (SAICM) and to the development of
the global legal instrument on mercury.
ii. We aim to protect each child from the risks posed by exposure to harmful
substances and preparations, focusing on pregnant and breast-feeding
women and places where children live, learn and play. We will identify
those risks and eliminate them as far as possible, by 2015.
iii. We will act on the identified risks of exposure to carcinogens, mutagens and
reproductive toxicants, including radon, ultraviolet radiation, asbestos and
endocrine disruptors, and urge other stakeholders to do the same. In
particular, unless we have already done so, we will develop by 2015
national programmes for elimination of asbestos-related diseases in
collaboration with WHO and ILO.
iv. We call for more research into the potentially adverse effects of persistent,
endocrine-disrupting and bio-accumulating chemicals and their
combination, as well as for the identification of safer alternatives. We also
call for an increase of research into the use of nanoparticles in products and
nanomaterials, and electromagnetic fields, in order to evaluate possible
harmful exposures. We will develop and use improved health risk and
benefit assessment methods.
v. We call upon all stakeholders to work together to reduce children’s
exposure to noise, including that from personal electronic devices,
recreation and traffic, especially in residential areas, at child care centres,
kindergartens, schools and public recreational settings. We urge and offer
our assistance to WHO to develop suitable guidelines on noise.
4
Such as the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and
their Disposal, the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain
Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent
Organic Pollutants, as well as the protocols on heavy metals and on persistent organic pollutants to the
1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution.
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vi. We will pay particular attention to child labour and exploitation as one of
the major settings of exposure to relevant risks, and especially to hazardous
chemicals and physical stressors.
B. Protecting health and the environment from climate change
2. We are committed to protecting health and well-being, natural resources and
ecosystems and to promoting health equity, health security and healthy environments in
a changing climate. Taking into account the ongoing work under the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change and recognizing subregional,
socioeconomic, gender and age variability, we will:
i. integrate health issues in all climate change mitigation and adaptation
measures, policies and strategies at all levels and in all sectors. We will
assess, prevent and address any adverse health effects of such policies by,
for example, strengthening health promotion in environmental policies;
ii. strengthen health, social welfare and environmental systems and services to
improve their response to the impacts of climate change in a timely manner,
for example to extreme weather events and heat waves. In particular, we
will protect the supply of water and the provision of sanitation and safe food
through adequate preventive, preparedness and adaptive measures;
iii. develop and strengthen early warning surveillance and preparedness systems
for extreme weather events and disease outbreaks, for example vector-borne
diseases, at the animal-human-ecosystem interface, where appropriate;
iv. develop and implement educational and public awareness programmes on
climate change and health, to encourage healthy, energy-efficient
behaviours in all settings and provide information on opportunities for
mitigation and adaptation interventions, with a particular focus on
vulnerable groups and subregions;
v. collaborate to increase the health sector’s contribution to reducing
greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen its leadership on energy- and
resource-efficient management and stimulate other sectors, such as the food
sector, to do the same;
vi. encourage research and development, for example with tools for forecasting
climate impacts on health, identifying health vulnerability and developing
appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures.
3. We call on the WHO Regional Office for Europe, to discuss with the European
Commission, the European Environment Agency, the United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe, the United Nations Environment Programme and other
partners, on setting up European information platforms for systematic sharing of best
practices, research, data, information, technology and tools focused on health at all
levels.
4. We welcome the regional framework for action entitled Protecting health in an
environment challenged by climate change. We recommend that the approaches
described in it are used to support action in this area.
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C. Involvement of children, young people and other stakeholders
5. We will ensure that youth participation in national as well as international
processes is facilitated across all Member States by providing them with assistance,
adequate resources and the training required, and by giving them opportunities for
meaningful involvement.
6. We will increase our cooperation with local and subnational authorities,
intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, the business community, trade
unions, professional associations and the scientific community, drawing on their
experience and knowledge in order to achieve the best possible results.
7. We call on the business community to address the challenges posed in this
Commitment, for instance through relevant corporate and sectoral programmes.
8. We will seek to improve knowledge of environment and health issues and build
the capacity of all professionals, with particular emphasis on health professionals and
professional caretakers of children.
D. Knowledge and tools for policy-making and implementation
9. We support the development of the European Environment and Health
Information System (ENHIS). We call on the WHO Regional Office for Europe, and
also on the European Commission and the European Environment Agency to continue
to assist Member States with the development of internationally comparable indicators,
and to assist in the interpretation and practical application of relevant research results.
10. We encourage all relevant international organizations to further develop common
tools and guidelines to address the economic impacts of environmental risk factors to
health, including the cost of inaction, thereby facilitating the development and
enforcement of legal instruments.
11. We will contribute to develop a consistent and rational approach to human
biomonitoring as a complementary tool to assist evidence-based public health and
environmental measures, including awareness-raising for preventive actions.
12. We acknowledge the contributions, conclusions and recommendations of the
International Public Health Symposium on Environment and Health Research held in
Madrid in October 2008. We agree to secure support for interdisciplinary research in
line with the policy objectives of this Declaration and to improve the development of
identified tools,5 including health impact assessment. We will use existing information
for policy-making and apply the precautionary principle where appropriate, especially
in respect of new and emerging issues.
5
Such as the Protocol on Strategic Environmental Assessment to the Convention on Environmental
Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context.
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13. We affirm the need for participation of the public and stakeholders in tackling
environment and health issues. We will develop and implement initiatives on risk
perception, assessment, management and communication.
