GEO Brasil - UNEP

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4.11.2. Society’s Participation
After the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and
Development (RIO 92), the Pan-American Health
Organisation – PAHO held the 1995 Pan-American
Conference on Health and Environment in Sustainable
Human Development with the purpose of defining and
adopting a set of health and environment policies and
strategies, as well as establishing a Regional Action Plan
on sustainable development to interact with the various
national plans to be created by the other American countries
and presented during the conference.
These efforts are expected to develop and intensify in the
future, given the importance of this issue for the
improvement of present and future populations’ living
conditions and welfare, as well as the need to promote
methods of production, circulation and consumption that
ensure sustainability and equity in our society.
In order to implement the National Action Plan on Health
and Environment in Sustainable Development, a
decentralised consultation process involving the technicalscientific
community and organised civil society in Brazil
resulted in a set of guidelines for health, environment,
sanitation and water resources policies and actions, as well
as requisites for integrated actions involving other sectors
of society.
Based on these guidelines, Brazilian society has been
working through civil society organisations, specially
environmental organisations, trade unions and professional
associations, as well as participating in local, regional and
federal health and environmental councils, independently
or jointly with the government, in an attempt to raise issues,
plan demonstrations and carry out actions to protect health
and the environment, thus defining goals and attaching
meaning to the proposals and initiatives at local, national
and global levels.
The government, on the other hand, has been trying to
establish policies and plan and implement activities and
actions that may fulfil the expectations and provisions
of international agreements at different levels, including
health and environment ones. These agreements protect
all sorts of interests, principles and projects, and may
lack the necessary coherence to reach the fairest goals
and save lives and suffering. However, considering the
issues addressed herein, it is important to remember that
many governmental initiatives at federal, state and
municipal levels have been implemented and their
positive effects are already visible, despite their recent
implementation.
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