MANY TO MANY 65 WORLD RESOURCES

WORLD RESOURCES

According to the 1998-99 World Resources report, one in five children from the poorest regions of the world will not live to see their fifth birthday. This means that about 11 million children – the combined population of Norway and Switzerland – die yearly of illnesses, almost all of them caused by environmental degradation.

In the section of the report, called Environmental Change and Human Health, is described how, in spite of vast improvements in human health worldwide resulting in healthier and longer lives of millions of people in the past decades, 'preventable illnesses and premature deaths are still occurring in shockingly large numbers':

* Almost 4 million children die each year of acute respiratory infections linked to indoor and outdoor air pollution;

* Malaria claims 1 to 3 million lives a year, most of them children;

* Another 3 million children die each year of diarrhoeal diseases

* Cholera, long banished from Latin America, reappeared in 1997 claiming some 11,000 lives and causing economic impacts worth an estimated $200 million in Peru alone;

* In developing countries there may be as many as 3.5 to 5 million acute pesticide poisonings per year, with millions more people experiencing lower but still dangerous exposures.

Environmental threats to health in industrialized countries are also of concern:

* more than 100 million people in Europe and North America are still exposed to unsafe air with some air pollutants proving more difficult to control than expected;

* The incidence of asthma is rising dramatically throughout the developed world and environmental factors appear to be at least partly to blame;

* The excessive use of fertilizers is disrupting coastal ecosystems, leading to harmful algal blooms and fish deaths;

* Biological contamination is not a thing of the past as demonstrated by the 1993 outbreak of crytosporidium in the United States city of Milwaukee;

* Increasing international travel and trade is providing new opportunities for the spread or re-emergence of infectious diseases. In the past two decades, some 30 'new' such diseases have appeared, including Lyme disease and rare haemorraghic fevers such as Ebola, while other previously controlled ones have returned with a vengeance.

Because many of the environmental conditions that impact health are avoidable, prevention of health problems through environmental management, rather than simply treating diseases and ailments after they have occurred, is the salient message of this important report. It offers governments, development agencies, policy-making groups, private businesses, communities and individuals worldwide strategies to slow or even halt further environmental deterioration, averting significant ecological disruption and its possible accompanying economic impacts.

World Resources 1998-99 also includes a new section on global environment trends which highlights environmental issues in short, easy-to-read stories, as well as an extensive data section with new statistics on health, biodiversity, watersheds and other related topics.

World Resources 1998-99, with the sub-title A Guide to the Global Environment, was released jointly this year by the World Resources Institute, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank. The Report is edited by Leslie Roberts and published by Oxford University Press. Available from booksellers or SMI, P.O. Box 119, Stevenage, Herts SGl 4TP, U.K. Price: $24.95.
Source: Our Planet, Volume 9 Number 5, 1998.

Anthony Brooke and Gita Brooke, co-founders
Te Rangi, 4 Allison Street, Wanganui 5001, New Zealand
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