In the ports of Abidjan, the largest city in Ivory Coast, a ship chartered by Dutch-based commodities trader Trafigura illegally, in 2006, unloaded 500 tonnes of toxic waste which were then dumped in town by local contractors. This incident of contamination alone is estimated to have affected the wellbeing of over 30,000 people, causing various illnesses. Nearby in the oil-rich deltas of Nigeria, the carcinogen benzene contaminated some village water at levels 900 times above World Health Organisation limits. Clearly, something needs to be done about Africa’s environmental wellness.
Last month, the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) released a report on the multifaceted connection between environmental and human wellness, entitled; the African Environment Outlook-3. 30% of the continent’s disease burden can be attributed to environmental factors, compared to six European countries where this number dips to approximately 5%, according to a 2011 study. Thus, the report concludes that the environment-health link deserves ‘priority consideration in national development’ across Africa.
According to Dominique Charron, programme leader of the Ecohealth programme initiative at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), ‘For economies to thrive in the long term, workforces and families must be healthy. Health and economies both depend on well-managed natural resources and healthy ecosystems. Links between the environment, human health, and the process of development have been woefully neglected for such an intuitively obvious concept.’
This report is the latest in a series of three, the first of which was published eleven years ago and the second in 2006. In each report, a broad environmental policy has been raised and the latest looks at how human health is connected to seven environmental areas, including air quality, biodiversity, chemicals and waste, climate change and variability, coastal and marine resources, freshwater and sanitation, and land. Alongside the range of respiratory infections and cancers that disproportionately affect women and children due to environmental factors, the report also highlights more subtle human health implications that flow from things such as biodiversity loss and extreme weather induced by climate change.
Charron commented, ‘Fundamental changes in economies and societies are required to address the big and complex issues. This is not easy to achieve.’ She explained that the IDRC has helped roll out local projects that lower environmental disease burden, like rice cultivation methods that reduce malaria incidents in Peru, ‘but taking these to scale has not been a straightforward process. Unless civil society takes up the call for action and governments respond with policies, incentives, and regulations, nothing changes.’
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