Inheriting a sustainable world: Atlas on children’s health and the environment

Overview

Children are exposed to many different environments that have a profound influence on their growth and development. Environmental exposures, both adverse and health-promoting, do not work in isolation but interact with social and nutritional determinants of health to influence children’s health and well-being. Whatever the natural resources and level of economic development, for all countries and all communities, children represent the future – to be nurtured and protected. And as governments discuss sustainability in the face of growing populations requiring food, water, housing and other basic needs, investing in the health of children by reducing exposure to environmental risks has to be an overriding priority. Only in healthy environments do children have the potential to become healthy adults, capable of meeting the challenges of the future.

The beginning of 2016 marked the start of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); 17 standards that provide a broad framework for economic, social and environmental development. Though we have achieved a substantial decline in early childhood deaths and a reduction in communicable diseases, more investment and action is needed to tackle the major challenge represented by environmental exposures. The SDGs emphasize that health is inextricably linked to factors such as poverty, inequity, climate change and pollution; it is our duty to overcome the structural failures of the past and act to address such factors now. Much of the environmental burden of disease on children is completely preventable – for example, by reducing obesogenic environments, improving water and sanitation, limiting pollution and safely disposing of chemical waste.

More than a decade after WHO published Inheriting the world: The atlas of children’s health and the environment in 2004, this new publication presents the continuing and emerging challenges to children’s environmental health. This new edition is not simply an update but a more detailed review; we take into account changes in the major environmental hazards to children’s health over the last 13 years, due to increasing urbanization, industrialization, globalization and climate change, as well as efforts in the health sector to reduce children’s environmental exposures. Inheriting a sustainable world? Atlas on children’s health and the environment aligns with the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health, launched in 2015, in stressing that every child deserves the opportunity to thrive, in safe and healthy settings.

In publishing this book, we seek to promote the importance of creating sustainable environments and reducing the exposure of children to modifiable environmental hazards. The wide scope of the SDGs offers a framework within which to work and improve the lives of all children. To this end, we encourage further data collection and tracking of progress on the SDGs, to show the current range of global environmental hazards to children’s health and identify necessary action to ensure that no one is left behind.