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First Joint Meeting of the Health and Environment Ministers of the Americas
4 - 5 March 2002, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada


 

IISD's Summary Report is available on-line in HTML ball.gif (204 bytes) TEXT ball.gif (204 bytes) PDF

The first Meeting of the Health and Environment Ministers of the Americas was held from 4-5 March 2002 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The meeting was organized by the Canadian Departments of Health and Environment, in cooperation with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Twenty-nine Ministers of Health and/or Environment from countries in the Americas gathered for the meeting, which was also attended by over 150 other representatives of governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, and United Nations agencies. Canada's Minister of Environment, David Anderson, and Minister of Health, Anne McLellan, facilitated the meeting and moderated the discussions.

The meeting aimed to build bridges between the health and environment sectors to address common issues, strengthen countries' capacities to manage health and environment issues effectively, establish follow-up mechanisms, and contribute to the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg. To achieve these aims, participants met in Plenary sessions focusing on the following issues: building bridges between the health and environment sectors and setting future directions; establishing issues of common concern and shared goals; and building and sharing capacities to address environmental threats to human health.

The meeting concluded with the adoption of a Ministerial Communiqué on health and environment that will feed into the WSSD and Summit of the Americas processes. The Communiqué established an agenda and an ongoing process for future work on environment and health issues.

 


Canada's Minister of Environment, David Anderson, and Minister 
of Health, Anne McLellan, facilitated the meeting and moderated 
the discussions.
 

Janine Ferretti, Executive Director of the Commission for
 Environmental Cooperation (CEC), presented a case study on 
the elimination of DDT use for malaria control.

Juan Mayr, Colombia's Minister of Environment, participated 
in the meeting. 


Ministers and other government representatives during discussions
 on the role of knowledge in providing the basis for policy responses
 and actions to address environmental threats to human health.


Ministers discuss the draft Ministerial Communiqué.

Canada's Health Minister, Anne McLellan (far right), makes her 
closing remarks during the meeting's final session. 


 


Links

Ministerial Communiqué: http://www.ec.gc.ca/international
HEMA b
ackground documents:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/international/regorgs/hema_e.htm

Sustainable Developments report from the 2001 First Meeting of the Ministers of the Environment of the Americas: http://enb.iisd.org/crs/ema/

Summit of the Americas process and history:

http://www.summit-americas.org/eng/summitprocess.htm

Sustainable Developments home page ~ Linkages home page

©2002, IISD. All rights reserved.