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Including health in environmental assessments

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) legislation is supposed to deal with health effects, but in reality they are assessed poorly or not at all. Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) allows the identification and prevention of possible environmental effects from the start and enables environmental objectives to be considered on a par with socioeconomic ones. Fields of application are very diverse; transport, for example, has been extensively explored. SEA, undertaken much earlier in the decision-making process than EIA, is therefore a key tool to prevent ill health and tackle health inequalities.

WHO/Europe contributed significantly to putting health high onto the agenda of the environmental sector, for example, through integrating health issues and policies in environmental performance reviews and making recommendations for progress in environmental health. In the 2003 Kiev Declaration, ministers reaffirmed their commitment to implement effectively the joint WHO/United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Transport, Health and Environment Pan-European Programme (THE PEP), a successful example of integration of environment and public health into sectoral policies.

SEA in the European Region is supported by two key legal frameworks: the 2004 European Union (EU) SEA Directive (2001/42/EC), and the UNECE Protocol on SEA, signed in 2003 by 35 European countries in Kiev, Ukraine, which requires the application of SEA in those countries and prescribes full consideration of human health aspects.

WHO and the SEA Protocol

WHO actively participated in the negotiations for the SEA Protocol, whose signature in 2003 marked a full integration of health in the evaluation of development policies. The Protocol is a means of integrating environmental and health concerns into the decision-making process, requiring Parties to evaluate the environmental (and health) consequences of their draft plans and programmes.

A resolution of the 2004 WHO Regional Committee for Europe reflects the health sector’s increased awareness of the provisions of the Protocol. WHO/Europe is assisting countries in the WHO European Region in addressing health within the SEA process.

For long time, EIAs focused on the physical and biological environment and rarely included potential effects on human health. WHO’s involvement in the SEA Protocol negotiations, as well as the political commitments made in 1999 at the Third Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health, is reflected in the Protocol’s attempt to redress this imbalance by placing special emphasis on human health.