GEO Brasil - UNEP

The state of health and the environment
the state of the environment in Brazil
The notion that health, economic development, quality of
life and environmental sustainability are correlated is now
being supplanted by the idea that the human ability to
interfere plays a critical role in the harmony and evolution
of complex systems It is thus necessary to identify the
potentialities and responsibilities derived from the human
society’s ability to influence its own destiny and ultimately
the destiny of the entire planet’s life
Just like the control over other relevant elements of life
conditions, control over transmissible diseases is now more
and more transferred to locations and to people in the hope
that they will build new relations between individuals,
communities and environment and that they will establish
a vision of self-sustainable human development
The expansion of old diseases, now with a new socioenvironmental
bias, and the emergence of countless other
diseases, are an indication of a need to develop a broader
collective sense No matter how much we stress the
importance of new behaviours and an environmental
management geared towards health and sustainability, these
issues cannot be dissociated from the broader picture, where
they take on a new significance
This is certainly a paramount achievement towards greater
autonomy and integration between society and nature and
nevertheless it is inconsistent with the current policy-making
trends of States, including Brazil, within the globalised world
in which they operate, which end up diverting from the real
needs and concerns of different segments of the population
In this sense, health and life conditions can only be relevant
when associated to a place and a people, where they should
be figured out to the extent of available resources
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