By Gabriela Bueno de Almeida Moraes, GEG Youth Voices Contributor On Governance and Forests The International Year of Forests, celebrated in 2011, intends to show how forests relate to social and economic development, and the importance of forest protection in environmental conservation as a whole. As pointed out by the 2010 Report of the Secretary-General [...]
By Walker Young, GEG Youth Voices Contributor The Role of Monitoring in Global Environmental Governance At the 2009 Global Environmental Governance Forum in Glion, Switzerland, former UNEP Executive Director Elizabeth Dowdeswell gave an honest and direct assessment of the challenges which have plagued global environmental governance (GEG) to date, stating that there exist “some real [...]
My message is clear and direct: Climate change is, first and foremost, a health issue.
This is not an original concept—dozens of papers from all over the world have already explained the impact of climate change on human health. In 2009, the commission formed by Lancet and the University College London (UCL) called climate change “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”—proof that human health and the environment are by design interconnected and inseparable. Some of the health threats studied and predicted in these papers are already being felt today, especially in developing countries. Infectious diseases like dengue fever and cholera remain on the rise. The increases in severity and frequency of natural disasters, specifically typhoons and cyclones, have already caused tremendous morbidity and mortality in many countries, just like in my home, the Philippines. On the other hand, drought in Africa heightened the problem of undernutrition among children. The list of health consequences of climate change is endless.
The Global Environmental Governance Project is now accepting essays, op-eds and commentaries for our new “Youth Voices” project. The project aims to foster a healthy discussion on important environmental issues, while at the same time promoting young student scholars and their ideas. The first published essay is by Ramon Lorenzo Luis R. Guinto, who argues that [...]
