CHILDREN AND ENVIRONMENT A UNICEF STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
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CHILDREN AND ENVIRONMENT
A UNICEF STRATEGY
FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - extracted text
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A UNICEF Policy Review
CHILDREN AND ENVIRONMENT
A UNICEF STRATEGY
FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
UNICEF
unicef
United Nations Children's Fund
A UNICEF POLICY REVIEW
CHILDREN AND ENVIRONMENT
A UNICEF STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
UNICEF
UNICEF
New York, N.Y., USA
Copyright (C) 1989
United Nations Children’s Fund
3 UN Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10017
ISSN 1013-3194
September 1989
This Policy Review (E/ICEF/1989/L.6), 13 February 1989, was
originally presented to the UNICEF Executive Board in April 1989. Decisions
1989/18 and 1989/6 were taken by the UNICEF Executive Board on the
recommendation of its Programme Committee.
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All correspondence should be addressed to:
Dr. Pierre-Emeric Mandi
Chief, Research, Programme Publications and Library Section,
Programme Division
Telex: 175989TRT
Phone: 1-212-326-7062
Facsimile: 1 -212-326-7096
C M " / U'O
L i u Uu
CONTENTS
Page
SUMMARY
5
I.
BACKGROUND
7
II.
CHILDREN’S STAKE IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
9
III.
Poverty and affluence
10
Degradation of forests, land and water
11
Global warming and environmental pollution
12
Natural and man-made disasters
13
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS IN ONGOING UNICEF ACTIONS
15
Situation analysis
17
Country programming
18
Monitoring and evaluation
18
Child survival and development
19
Women in development
20
Water supply and sanitation
21
Food and nutrition
23
Education
24
Urban basic services
26
Appropriate technology
27
IV.
CO-ORDINATION WITH OTHER AGENCIES
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V.
UNICEF EXECUTIVE BOARD DECISION 1989/18
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VI.
UNICEF EXECUTIVE BOARD DECISION 1989/6
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I. BACKGROUND
In 1988, a conference room paper entitled “Children, the environment and
UNICEF” (E/ICEF/1988/CRR5) was presented to the Executive Board for information.
The paper represented the initial UNICEF response to General Assembly resolution
42/186 on the Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond, and resolution
42/187 accepting the report of the World Commission on Environment and Develop
ment (the “Brundtland report”, A/42/427, annex, of 4 August 1987). These resolutions
requested all United Nations system agencies to examine their ongoing programmes
and policies for environmental impact, and to report regularly to the General Assembly
on the progress being made in achieving the objectives of environmentally sound and
sustainable development.
During the Executive Board review of the conference room paper, several
delegations stressed that UNICEF should play an important role in the follow-up of the
Brundtland report and in the promotion of its main concept-sustainable develop
ment. Links between environmental concerns and other areas of UNICEF work, espe
cially water and sanitation and women in development, were noted by a number of
delegations. While recognizing the stake of children in environmentally sound and
sustainable development, some delegations cautioned that environmental issues
should be dealt with as an integral part of ongoing UNICEF-assisted activities, without
adding new areas of priority, and thus avoiding dispersal of resources in areas beyond
its overall mandate.
The secretariat responded by suggesting that environmental concerns would be
incorporated in the formulation and implementation of programmes and that educa
tion might provide the greatest rate of return for UNICEF investment in environment.
In conclusion, the Executive Board requested the Executive Director to submit a report
at its 1989 session on the implementation by UNICEF of the relevant General Assemb
ly resolutions so as to enable it to report, through the Economic and Social Council, to
the General Assembly at its forty-fourth session (E/ICEF/1988/13, resolution 1988/18).
The present policy review paper responds to that request.
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II. CHILDREN’S STAKE IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Economic and social development —in both developing and industrialized
countries—must rest on the bedrock of sustainability. This is the central premise of
the Brundtland Commission, which defines sustainable development as “development
that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future genera
tions to meet their own needs”.
Children, naturally, have a stake in sustainable development. Their survival,
protection and development depends on it. As the world’s lead agency for children,
UNICEF actions must contribute to environmentally sound and sustainable develop
ment.
Mass poverty on the one hand, and the wasteful consumption patterns of the af
fluent and short-term perspective of private as well as public development efforts on
the other hand, are at the root of environmental degradation. As the Brundtland Com
mission has aptly reminded us, our “common future” will, therefore, be shaped by how
we eradicate poverty, adopt more restrained and conservationist consumption pat
terns and promote a longer-term perspective for development planning. The neglect
of these concerns can only accelerate the environmental perils which threaten
mankind, and especially children.
Much alarm has been expressed in recent years about the population explosion
and the consequent degradation of land, air, water and other natural resources.
Deforestation, global warming, ozone depletion and industrial pollution have emerged
as major environmental concerns, part of that category UNICEF terms “the loud emer
gencies”. From the UNICEF perspective, there is also an ongoing “silent emergency”
of environmental degradation that affects the environment in which children are born,
grow up and often die premature deaths. This is the environment, for example, of the
malnourished, sick and illiterate mother, on whose care an infant is totally dependent
from conception up to about six months of age; an environment marked by unsafe
drinking water, unsanitary surroundings, the prevalence of such deadly or crippling
diseases as diarrhoea, malaria, pneumonia, measles, polio and tetanus, and the
deficiency of iodine, vitamin A and other micro-nutrients vital for health.
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The protection of children from the negative consequences of these “silent” en
vironmental threats is no less important than efforts to deal with the “louder" environ
mental emergencies. In fact, lasting success in dealing with some of the louder
environmental emergencies is very much dependent on improvements in the silent
emergencies. For example, while the population explosion is often regarded as the
root cause of many of the world’s environmental problems, the historical pattern of
demographic change in all nations shows that a sustained decline in birth rates is un
likely to be achieved without a sustained decline in child deaths. Programmes to
reduce infant and child mortality are thus a prerequisite for reducing population
growth and, therefore, of direct relevance to improving the environment.
Chapter II of the present report discusses how UNICEF-assisted actions in sup
port of child survival, development and protection respond to environmental concerns
and how they might be improved further. This section deals with the more general
threats to children caused by poverty as well as affluence; the degradation of forests,
land and water; global warming and environmental pollution; and natural and man
made disasters.
Poverty and affluence
Interaction between poverty and the environment leads to a downward spiral of
degradation. Whereas the affluent pollute knowingly or thoughtlessly, the poor en
danger the environment of necessity. As the Brundtland Commission observed,
“Those who are poor and hungry will often destroy their immediate environment in
order to survive; they will cut down forests, their livestock will overgraze grasslands;
they will overuse marginal lands; and in growing numbers they will crowd into con
gested cities”. The environment of poverty perpetuates itself starting with povertystricken mothers overwhelmed by caring for large families, weakened by frequent
pregnancy and lactation, rearing children whose basic needs of health, nutrition,
physical and mental well-being remain unfulfilled and whose productivity, when they
reach adulthood, will remain well below their human potential, thus further exacerbat
ing the vicious cycle of ill health and poverty.
Comparable to poverty at the family level, poverty at the national level has similar
negative consequences for the environment. A major underlying reason for the ongo
ing destruction of the environment is the poverty and debt trap in which many
developing countries find themselves. Many countries, especially in Africa and Latin
America, have little possibility of pursuing the "sustainable economic policies" recom
mended by the Brundtland Commission when they are forced to deplete their forests,
soil, water and other natural resources in order to pay their external debt, provide for
essential imports and meet their unavoidable budgetary obligations. Efforts to break
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this vicious cycle of poverty of nations, as well as of families and communities, is,
therefore, an essential prerequisite to preventing further environmental degradation.
Affluence, like poverty, is also a major cause of environmental degradation. The
industrialized countries, and, to a lesser extent, the affluent people in developing
countries, are the major producers of household garbage, toxic industrial waste,
automotive exhaust fumes, chlorofluorocarbons and commercial deforestation. Be
sides being harmful to the environment, the excessively wasteful consumption pat
terns of the affluent pose a serious danger to their own health and well-being as
manifested in the increased incidence of obesity, cancers, hypertension, stress and
accidents in the industrialized world. A life-style that depends on the wanton exploita
tion of non-renewable resources, or resources that are used up much faster than na
ture can regenerate, is unsustainable. For children, affluence of this type is as much a
threat to their future as poverty.
In the longer-term, mankind’s response to the environmental crisis must be the
adoption of a new approach to development in which a major goal would be to “do
more with less” —to support a larger population, with higher quality of life, while
safeguarding and improving the natural resource base for future generations.
Degradation of forests, land and water
The ever-increasing demand for agricultural land, building materials, furniture and
domestic fuel is leading to large-scale deforestation, denuding fragile mountains and
removing protective vegetation from soils vulnerable to the eroding forces of wind and
water. As a result, the earth loses 26 billion tons of top soil annually —equivalent to the
cultivated area of Australia. This has disastrous consequences for food production,
ground-water storage capacity and household fuel.
It is estimated that by the year 2100, some 65 per cent of the rainfed cropland in
the developing world will have been destroyed by erosion if present trends are not
reversed. This will not only aggravate the competition in developing countries for al
ready scarce arable land, but it will also diminish the productivity of the available land,
exacerbating the food and nutrition problems of children in a growing population.
Deforestation reduces bio-diversity which is essential for life because of the inter
dependencies that link flora and fauna. The massive clearing of forests and the farm
ing of virgin lands reduce the number of animal and plant species even as human
population increases rapidly, thus upsetting the natural balance evolved over millennia.
The expansion of intensive farming of land and water, using genetically homogeneous
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mono-cultures, further results in a loss of genetic diversity. Such irrecoverable losses
of genetic material will ultimately affect mankind by limiting the range of potential sour
ces of foods, drugs and disease-resistant base-stock.
Ground-water tables have been steadily falling in many regions of the world, par
ticularly in Africa, China and India, undermining the possibilities for the poor to
manage their health, soils and environment in a sustainable way.
Excessive runoff from unprotected, denuded land is clogging rivers, streams and
lakes with soil and debris, leading to increased danger of flooding and limiting the life
of water reservoirs while, in some cases, reducing hydro-electric power potential.
Moreover, large-scale erosion in major river catchments can become a regional issue
as problems arising in one country frequently rebound to maximum effect in a neigh
bouring country. The massive floods of Bangladesh and the Sudan in 1988 are a case
in point.
In developing countries, deforestation has led to acute shortages of firewood for
rural families and to considerable increases in its cost to poor urban families. Where
alternative domestic fuels are neither available nor affordable, this increases the work
load of women, reduces the standard of living for both the rural and urban poor and
adversely affects the well-being of children. Atmospheric pollution in the industrialized
countries of Europe and North America, as well as in China and some other in
dustrializing countries, causes acid rain which, in turn, can destroy vast areas of forest.
The ensuing reduction in the carbon dioxide conversion capacity of the earth’s forests,
coupled with increased combustion of fossil fuels, has led to an alarming rise in at
mospheric carbon dioxide levels, contributing to what environmentalists fear will be a
global warming trend.
Global warming and environmental pollution
The “greenhouse” effect stemming from the excess of carbon dioxide and other
gases in the atmosphere has become a matter of serious global concern. It has al
ready triggered an inevitable process of climatic change induced by the warming of
the earth, its oceans and atmosphere, which is regarded as potentially the gravest en
vironmental problem confronting humanity. The predicted global warming could wors
en frequently occurring droughts and desert “creep”, making food production more
precarious, especially in Africa, and leading to increased hunger and malnutrition. In
the longer term, the warming trend will force changes in crop production patterns as
the ability of plants to thrive under increasingly hot and arid conditions diminishes and
traditional staple foods can no longer be produced. Furthermore, as global warming
melts the polar ice, rising sea levels could lead to the flooding of vast tracts of low-
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lying farm land and inundate some of the world’s largest concentrations of urban
population (e.g. in Bangladesh, Egypt and the Netherlands).
Pollution, caused by chlorofluorocarbons, commonly used in air-conditioning
and refrigeration equipment, aerosol cans and styrofoam materials, is leading to the
depletion of the protective ozone layer of the upper atmosphere. Some experts at
tribute the increasing incidence of skin cancer to the increased transmission of ultra
violet radiation. It is also suspected that increased ultra-violet B radiation depresses
the human immune system, lowering the body’s resistance to disease and, in conse
quence, decreasing the effectiveness of such inoculation programmes as those for
diphtheria and tuberculosis.
The growth of human and industrial waste is increasing disease susceptibility
among the more vulnerable, particularly in high population density areas. Both solid
and liquid waste moving in surface or sub-surface water bodies, as well as gaseous
wastes discharged into the atmosphere, frequently spread their effects across national
boundaries, and in some instances, around the globe. The export of toxic wastes to
dump sites remote from their point of origin poses similar hazards to community
health.
Natural and man-made disasters
Acts of nature can become disasters for the human population when their effects
are greatly magnified by environmental and resource mismanagement. It is increas
ingly recognized that disasters, formerly considered to be entirely beyond human in
fluence, often have their roots in environmental degradation. For example, periodic
low rainfall years become disastrous drought years when the land’s carrying capacity
is abused by man and his domestic livestock. Loss of vegetative cover as a result of
excessive grazing can lead to soil loss through wind erosion or, when the rains even
tually arrive, flooding. This reduces the moisture-retention capacity of the remaining
soil, which further aggravates the potential for devastation should the following year
prove dry.
Land degradation and poverty are locked in a similar vicious cycle. Driven by the
needs of growing families and deepening poverty, farmers are forced to increase the
production of their marginal land to an unsustainable level which can prove environ
mentally and economically disastrous, with obvious consequences for their families.
Hence, poverty, in limiting human choice, is both a cause and a consequence of en
vironmental degradation.
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As the end of the twentieth century draws nearer, more people than ever are
being affected by environmental risks and the repercussions of natural disasters. In
creasingly, the severity of disasters such as cyclones and flooding is being linked to
human influences on the global scale rather than simply to specific instances of en
vironmental degradation within the country or community most affected. In all such
situations, children and their immediate supporting structure of family and community
remain most vulnerable.
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III. ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS IN ONGOING UNICEF
ACTIONS
UNICEF concern for children extends through the totality of the child’s environ
ment. It encompasses all those factors that influence the child’s survival and sub
sequent physical, psycho-social and intellectual development to the point where its
life-long contribution to human progress can be fully realized. Considering the critical
importance of women, both as mothers and educators and as productive members of
society, the UNICEF sphere of action also includes the environment surrounding
women. UNICEF programmatic actions and policy-oriented advocacy affect the en
vironment of women and children in this broad sense.
The “traditional” areas of UNICEF co-operation —health and nutrition, water
supply and sanitation, education and social services - have always emphasized
preventive rather than curative measures. The relatively simple, cost-efficient and, at
the village level, sustainable, traditional, UNICEF-supported activities geared to im
prove environmental conditions for children and families include the following: im
munization; protection of water sources; personal and food hygiene; keeping the
home and its surroundings clean; utilization of local foods; building food storage
facilities; constructing dry pit latrines; using biogas, solar energy and fuel-efficient
stoves; and the inclusion of environmental issues in practical school curricula. Some
of the more recent policy-oriented advocacy of UNICEF such as “adjustment with a
human face", debt relief for child survival and support for the Convention on the Rights
of the Child also seek to improve the economic, social and legal environment of
children and other vulnerable groups. As highlighted by the Brundtland Commission,
which traced the links between national debt, economic stagnation, mass poverty and
the fragile environment, the traditional programmatic actions and policy-oriented ad
vocacy of UNICEF are both closely linked to sustainable development.
With such a breadth of organizational concern in both its official mandate and
practical actions, it would appear that what UNICEF needs is not further broadening of
its mandate but the deepening of its analysis to ensure that its actions take the en
vironmental impact into account and make a positive contribution towards the sus
tainability of development.
In preparation for the present report, a preliminary review was undertaken to
determine the extent to which environmental considerations, such as the ones men
tioned in this section, were reflected in existing or proposed programmes of UNICEF
co-operation. The review revealed the existence of a varying, but quite significant,
range of environment-related components in current UNICEF-assisted programmes.
Although environmental considerations are not always explicit in many country
programmes, their relatively low use of capital resources and high reliance on social
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mobilization, community participation and appropriate technology makes most
programmes environmentally sensitive and gives them a built-in element of sus
tainability.
A more exhaustive analysis of projects approved by the Executive Board for sup
plementary funding as found in the 1988 “salesbook" of project proposals revealed
that a sizeable number of these projects already address environmental concerns. In
many drinking water and environmental sanitation programmes, direct efforts are
focused not only on the provision of adequate and clean drinking water, but on the
protection of the water source through fencing out livestock and promoting afforesta
tion to ensure the maximum infiltration of rainfall to maintain ground-water reserves.
When associated with safe excreta and garbage disposal, such programmes have a
major direct beneficial impact on the physical environment and on the constraints of
poverty surrounding the lives of children.
Area-specific integrated projects, particularly those where UNICEF social
development activities are implemented in co-operation with other development agen
cies with mandates covering agricultural development, soil conservation or afforesta
tion, for example, provide excellent examples of sustainability. Some women’s
programmes, through addressing household energy availability, female education and
the empowerment of women for development, also help to alleviate poverty and, in so
doing, provide strong support for the attainment of sustainable development. Many
such projects include elements of environmental education, particularly those involv
ing non-formal education and literacy activities.
At the present time, projects with elements specifically addressing environmental
concerns that have already been approved by the Executive Board await funding in
the amount of over $118 million within country water supply and sanitation program
mes, and a further $33 million in such areas as women’s development and area
specific development programmes.
To complement the above, the Executive Director believes that UNICEF could
and should do still more to promote actions that are conducive to the protection of the
environment and sustainability of development while meeting the urgent needs of
children and mothers. To facilitate this it is proposed that:
a)
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In the annual and mid-term reviews of ongoing country programmes,
UNICEF representatives should be guided by the recommendations of this
policy paper, and should seek, in consultation with the host Government and
other partners, to enhance environmental components where they exist and
introduce such components if they are missing;
b)
Priority should be given to seeking funding for those projects with strong en
vironmental components that have already been approved by the Executive
Board for supplementary funding but which remain unfunded;
c)
To facilitate the addition or strengthening of environmental components in on
going country programmes that are currently weak in this regard or where
the potential for significant action is identified during the forthcoming annual
review and mid-term reviews, the Executive Director is recommending that
the Executive Board approve an interim project to support environmental ac
tions (E/ICEF/1989/P/L.29). The proposal seeks $3 million in general resour
ces and $3 million in supplementary funding to support planning, project
preparation and specific actions over the next two years, by which time en
vironmentally oriented actions will become regular components of country
programmes;
d)
In all future country programmes, UNICEF representatives will be asked to
systematically analyse the environmental impact of proposed actions and,
where appropriate, to include programme components that are specifically
designed to contribute to environmental protection and sustainability.
The following are some of the areas in which UNICEF could concentrate its ac
tions to strengthen programme components with environmental impact and to ensure
sustainability.
Situation analysis
The programming of UNICEF co-operation in a given country starts with the
preparation of a situation analysis of children and women. This is usually a com
prehensive study that analyses the problems and needs of children, along with their
structural and underlying causes, within the context of the broad demographic,
economic, socio-cultural and political setting of the country. The situation analysis is
prepared and used not only for determining the areas of UNICEF co-operation but,
more importantly, to highlight the needs of children and women so that this informa
tion can be used for consciousness-raising, policy advocacy, the planning of ap
propriate interventions and social mobilization on behalf of children.
A situation analysis dealing with the future generation should naturally examine
the current status and trends of the environment. Any policy advocacy resulting from
such an analysis should take into account the sustainability of the actions recom
mended. Even if the UNICEF area of programmatic actions is limited in a given
17
country, it is incumbent upon UNICEF to undertake a comprehensive situation analysis
that brings out the needs of children, including their physical and social environment,
for action by the Government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other
partners.
UNICEF needs to refine its analytical tools and methods in analysing the environ
mental causes and consequences of what is or is not being done as part of services
for meeting the needs of children. This is an area in which the collaboration of the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and other concerned agencies
should be solicited as appropriate.
Country programming
Following the situation analysis, UNICEF undertakes a country programming ex
ercise that entails identification of the areas of collaboration based on the areas of
convergence of Government priorities and UNICEF policies, the actions of other
partners, including their determination of the comparative advantage of collaboration
with UNICEF, and culminates in the establishment of goals and objectives and a
detailed plan of action. In this process too, UNICEF should be particularly vigilant in
examining environmental trade-offs between alternative courses of action, with sus
tainability an overriding consideration. In the programme appraisal and review
processes, particular care could be taken to ensure that environmental concerns are
dealt with explicitly. In addition to examining budgetary costs and project outputs or
service coverage, long-term environmental costs and the risks and benefits of a given
programme should be examined.
Here again, UNICEF will need to develop
methodological tools for undertaking such analysis.
Monitoring and evaluation
Project evaluation based on economists’ methodologies of discounted returns
are often inappropriate for estimating the results of socially or environmentally oriented
programmes. The sustainability of services for children needs to be looked at in a
longer time-frame than that of a current budget cycle or five-year plan. Unlike in
dustries, for example, children do not mature in the space of five years. Following the
lead of other agencies which have developed methodologies for assessing the en
vironmental impact of development projects, UNICEF should attempt to develop ap
propriate monitoring and evaluation instruments for services for children, including
those assisted by UNICEF.
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Child survival and development
The degradation of the world’s physical environment due to poverty, pollution,
natural disasters and unsustainable life-styles is both a cause and a consequence of
the degradation of the human environment characterized by high rates of mortality,
morbidity and fertility. UNICEF work in promoting child survival, development and
protection seeks to improve this human environment by combating disease and mal
nutrition and promoting education in a bid to reduce infant, child and maternal mor
tality and morbidity, which, in turn, helps reduce fertility as well.
As the concern for environment and sustainability of development is, to a large
extent, prompted by our concern for our children’s future, measures to ensure their
survival, protect their health, inculcate relevant education and enhance their produc
tivity should be the first item on an environmentalist’s agenda. A family that is not able
to protect its own children cannot be expected to protect the environment. A develop
ment programme that fails to address the meeting of basic human needs of the poor
and vulnerable will not only be unsustainable, but it cannot be expected to elicit
popular support and participation. Protection of the environment must, therefore, start
with the protection of the most vulnerable element of the human environment —
children.
UNICEF believes that the pursuit of child survival, development and protection is
therefore a major contribution, in fact a pre-condition, for establishing an environment
conducive to sustainable development. Once the basic needs of survival, develop
ment and protection are met, children as well as parents can be expected to be more
sensitive to protecting the environment which nurtures and sustains the ability to meet
such needs.
Protecting children and mothers from diseases that are directly attributable to
negative environmental factors such as iodine deficiency, xerophthalmia, acute
respiratory infections, malaria, diarrhoea, polio, measles, tetanus, guinea worm infesta
tion, drug abuse, etc., contributes to the positive spiral effect of healthy children grow
ing to a productive adulthood and an improved environment.
The consequences of not meeting the challenge of child survival and develop
ment (CSD) can be disastrous for the environment. For example, the rapid population
growth in developing countries—which is considered a major threat to the environ
ment and which saps maternal energy, causes high infant mortality, pauperizes al
ready poor families, further congests already overcrowded city slums, taxes the ability
of Governments to provide basic social services and perpetuates the cycle of pover
ty- cannot, according to historical evidence, be reduced without a sustained decline
19
in infant and child mortality. Furthermore, reductions in infant and child mortality can
not be sustained in the absence of basic education, especially female literacy.
The promotion of child survival through primary health care, nutrition interven
tions, education and other measures is therefore one of the necessary, pre-conditions
for the protection of the environment.
Women in development
Of all the programme areas assisted by UNICEF, perhaps the greatest potential
for environmentally sound development lies in empowering women in development in
areas ranging from pre-natal care and female literacy to income-generating activities
and leadership training for roles in community development programmes.
The survival, growth and development of a child-to-be is influenced by its
mother’s circumstances and environment. A woman who has been contaminated by
toxins from her environment that cannot be, or have not been, eliminated from her
body by the time of conception has already set the seal of fate on her future infant.
The consequences on the foetus of maternal malnutrition, anaemia, tetanus, acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and other diseases can only be dealt with
through improved maternal health, nutrition and education services.
Where the mother’s environment is one of poverty, nutritional and health factors
take on great significance in determining both growth and development prior to and
following the birth of the child. A deteriorating environment, therefore, means harder
work for women, less food and care for children and increased health hazards for
both.
The interaction of women with the environment as farmers, food producers and
household managers has a direct impact on the well-being of children. In environmen
tally damaged areas of the Himalayas and the Sahel, for example, women and children
are reported to spend from 100 to 300 days a year gathering fuel wood. Less time is
thus available for more productive work and for child care and less money, or barter, is
available for acquiring food. When soils become eroded or depleted, women have to
work longer hours and/or walk longer distances to cultivate more distant fields. This
usually means less food for their children or food of poorer nutritional quality, and less
time is available for child care. When water tables fall, water collection becomes more
difficult and longer hours have to be spent obtaining diminishing amounts of water. As
less water is available for personal hygiene, children become more susceptible to in
fection by disease or parasites.
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The more difficult it becomes to collect fuel and water or to cultivate marginal
lands, the greater will be the need to use children, particularly girls, for these time-con
suming tasks. This in turn leads to girls being either withheld from the education sys
tem or dropping out of school very early. It should also be realized that the more time
and work women have to devote to safeguarding the survival of their families, the less
time they have to devote to child care or to contribute to their learning and psycho-so
cial development. As a result, such childhood afflictions as diarrhoea increase and in
fant and child mortality rates increase. Even where the child survives poverty,
undernutrition, morbidity and a lack of stimulation leave a legacy of impediments to
the child’s continuing growth and development.
One of the most effective ways of improving the situation of children is, therefore,
to improve the environment surrounding women. Where population growth causes
environmental pollution and degradation, addressing the problem through support for
development activities for women is more likely to yield early and positive results.
Anything that is done to improve food supply, decrease the work-load of women or im
prove their status and introduce them to community decision-making processes is
likely to benefit children. Increasing energy inputs to rural production systems
through, for example, community wood lots or group ownership of a water mill, not
only have obvious implications for saving female labour for more productive activities,
but also confer added social status upon a community’s women.
It is generally recognized that women’s status in society, the availability of mater
nal and child health care, including knowledge of child spacing, increased family in
come and the availability of education for women, are all strong determinants of family
size. Improvement in the status of women is therefore an effective way to reduce
population growth and thus contribute to better human environment and sustainable
development.
Water supply and sanitation
Water is essential for life, not only for human beings but also for all other species
of flora and fauna that share our environment. Just as clean water can give life and
protect health, polluted water can ruin it. Proper management of water resources is,
therefore, vital for the protection of the environment.
UNICEF contributes to the protection and conservation of water sources and the
provision of clean water supplies for human consumption and, occasionally, for smallscale food production.
All UNICEF water supply and sanitation co-operation centres on the ultimate ob
jective of securing child health and well-being through improvements in the physical,
biological and social environment of children and their communities. This is to be
achieved primarily through the provision of safe, sufficient and accessible supplies of
water; sanitation facilities and promotion of their use; and related measures for food
and personal hygiene, environmental sanitation and vector control.
It is increasingly apparent that wherever assistance is provided for drinking water
schemes, attention must be paid to ensuring the sustainability of the source. Govern
ment and UNICEF water supply engineers address the problem of ground-water
recharge as part of this concern for human survival, particularly in the arid zone.
UNICEF also co-operates closely with government counterparts and others who are
concerned with the broader interrelationships between drinking water, irrigation water
and, in coastal areas, measures to prevent ground-water salinity. All of these ex
emplify the urgency of solving the problem of supplying competing demands from a
limited resource.
Poor environmental sanitation is a critical link in the chain of diarrhoeal disease
that entraps young children of developing countries and claims a large percentage of
deaths in the under-five-year-old age-group. Contributing factors are unsafe and insuf
ficient water supplies, the lack of safe means of human waste disposal and inadequate
personal and household hygiene, including poor food-handling practices. Health
problems created by those conditions include gastro-intestinal, viral and bacterial in
fections; various intestinal parasite infestations that drain limited food supplies and
heighten malnutrition; and skin and eye diseases (notably trachoma).
Beyond the prevention of diarrhoeal morbidity and deaths, improvements in
water supply and sanitation are effective in controlling cholera, typhoid, amoebiasis,
giardiasis and a variety of helminthic diseases. When water provides the only trans
mission route, as is the case with guinea worm, safe water supply is the single solution
to combating the disease. However, most diseases spread through multiple faecaloral transmission routes, necessitating improvements in sanitation, food hygiene and
knowledge as well.
The benefits of water supply and sanitation far exceed the impact on com
municable diseases. Even seemingly peripheral socio-economic community benefits
have a direct bearing on health. Accessible water supply can eliminate the wearisome
labour of women and children who must fetch water over long distances—typically a
walk of two to three hours each day. A trek of this length can consume 600 calories or
more, using up to one third of the daily nutritional intake. The impact of saving so
many calories directly benefits the health of the woman, facilitates breast-feeding and
aids the development of her children. In releasing women s time for more productive
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activities, the introduction of accessible water supply is often the first step in women’s
advancement to full participation in the development process.
As water is universally a community priority, water and sanitation activities serve
as an effective entry point around which communities can organize other basic ser
vices. Economic benefits accruing from water supply activities include micro-irrigation
leading to improved household food supplies, animal watering and the promotion of
income-generating activities. In summary, water supply and sanitation enhance the
overall quality of life for children and their communities in both the short term and, if
planned with care, in an environmentally sustainable long term as well.
Food and nutrition
The quest to meet rapidly growing food needs, combined with insufficient atten
tion to the environmental impact of agricultural policies and practices, has been a
major source of environmental degradation. Malnutrition, causing poor health and
lower productivity, contributes to poverty which, in turn, leads to environmental
degradation. The elimination of malnutrition would, therefore, contribute greatly to im
provement of the environment.
UNICEF-assisted nutrition programmes make a significant contribution to the
fight against malnutrition caused by infections (diarrhoea, measles, etc.) and micro
nutrient deficiencies such as iodine deficiency disorders, xerophthalmia, anaemia, etc.,
and a modest contribution to household food security. In the context of contributing
to environmental improvement, more could be done with respect to the latter.
UNICEF involvement in food production should be intensified mainly by improv
ing household food production and security, concentrating on assistance to women
for more efficient management of resources at their disposal. In practice, this will
mean helping women to acquire better seeds and tools and improving access to
small-scale irrigation and appropriate technology for planting, weeding, harvesting,
milling and storage as well as to agricultural extension.
At the same time, it is important to realize that improving the possibilities of
women to get legal and de facto rights to land, livestock and credit are a prerequisite
for sustainable food production. Special emphasis should be paid to increasing food
security at the household and village levels by:
a)
Introducing a variety of food crops that are more resistant to drought, salinity
and pests;
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b)
Cultivating “off-season" crops to increase food supply and counter the effects
of floods or droughts;
c)
Securing the supply of water for small-scale vegetable gardening and agricul
ture, especially during dry periods;
d)
Integrating food production with tree planting by alley cropping and smallscale agro-forestry schemes, utilizing nitrogen-fixing trees and bushes;
e)
Minimizing crop losses through proper combinations of plant species and
biological control methods and by building simple but durable food storage
receptacles;
f)
Maintaining soil fertility by proper management of water supply, conservation
of adequate humus by introduction of compost material and by proper com
binations of nitrogen-fixing tree species and, where necessary, chemical fer
tilizers;
g)
Biogas production to use waste materials to serve as a source of energy and
to provide sanitation and agricultural benefits;
h)
Avoiding excessive and dangerous use of pesticides with their harmful effects
on human health.
As UNICEF resources and expertise in these areas are limited, the organization’s
contribution will necessarily be in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Or
ganization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the Inter
national Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and others. UNICEF, however,
might take the lead in growth monitoring and promotion which, when properly under
taken, is one of the most powerful tools for evaluating the health and nutrition status
and general well-being of children.
Careful scrutiny of UNICEF-supported food and nutrition programmes could thus
help not only in tackling a major problem confronting children in their physical
development but also in improving the quality of the environment in which they will
grow.
Education
UNICEF co-operation in basic education, literacy and training components of
other programmes in developing countries, along with its work, through the National
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Committees, on development education in industrialized countries, provides an ideal
opportunity for inculcating environmental awareness, particularly among young
people. It is among the young that the ethic should be fostered to regard natural
resources as a precious heritage which must be protected and, where possible, en
hanced. To sustain development, natural resources should not be exploited any faster
than they can be regenerated by nature.
While already involved in developing countries, UNICEF could further intensify its
efforts in collaboration with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Or
ganization (UNESCO), UNEP and the World Health Organization (WHO) in the follow
ing areas:
a)
Curricula development at the primary school level and in literacy and teacher
training programmes to include aspects of environmental concerns. The
“Facts for Life” series, which seek to empower parents to cope with illnesses
and other negative environmental conditions that threaten the survival and
development of their children, could usefully be part of such curricula;
b)
Inclusion of environmental considerations in the training of traditional birth at
tendants, community health workers, caretakers of village water supplies and
community leaders;
c)
Collaboration with NGOs, the mass media and others to incorporate mes
sages dealing with environmental problems and solutions in their program
mes.
In industrialized countries, UNICEF could, through its National Committees and
other partners, help to promote development education that emphasizes environmen
tal issues which threaten North and South alike. The interrelationship between the
eradication of poverty in the South, alternative life-styles and development patterns in
the North and sustainability of prosperity for all should be the major themes of such
development education.
The younger generation’s concern for the deteriorating environment they are in
heriting could be turned into positive action through the bridge of development educa
tion spanning North and South. In industrialized countries, many young people —and
some who are older-would like to do more about the environmental problems they
see and hear so much about.
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Urban basic services
Recognizing that poverty is no longer an exclusively rural phenomenon but an in
creasingly urban problem, UNICEF has become involved in urban basic services for
children in many developing countries. In many of those countries, poor slum
dwellers and squatters already represent 50 to 75 per cent of the urban population.
Two thirds of the population growth in the developing world in the 1980s has taken
place in urban areas. By the year 2000, only 11 years from now, over 2 billion people,
or 40 per cent of the developing world’s population, will live in cities and towns.
Dwelling on unstable hillsides, flood-prone river banks or amidst the heavily pol
luted surroundings of factories and industries, most poor urban dwellers are indeed
“environmental refugees” escaping rural poverty. They bring with them the scars of
rural poverty as exemplified by illiteracy, poor health and other afflictions, and add to
these the urban hazards of overcrowded dwellings, noise and air pollution, stress, fear
of crime and, often, broken homes. In spite of the accessibility of their location, their
proximity to centres of power and decision-making, and the greater visibility of their
problems, urban slum dwellers are not always better served than their rural counter
parts in terms of social and economic services. The breakdown of family support sys
tems and traditional values leaves many more children in urban areas than in rural to
fend for themselves.
UNICEF experience in urban basic services has shown the resourcefulness of
the urban poor to solve their own problems given minimal external support. The in
novative street children programmes in Latin America, the preventive health care
programmes in Asia and Africa and the many slum improvement and income-generat
ing activities, part of sites and services programmes in poor urban neighbourhoods
throughout the developing world, show the potential for the development of environ
mentally sustainable ways.
To be effective, UNICEF support in some of the social sectors needs to be com
plemented with programmes supported by others which are capable of addressing
such fundamental issues as securing legal tenure for those living in “illegal" settle
ments, provision of low-cost housing and infrastructure, employment-generating ac
tivities and overall urban development planning. UNICEF can contribute to improving
the environment of the urban poor by complementing such economic and infrastruc
ture-related projects with small-scale, low-cost community self-help activities dealing
with child care, environmental sanitation, non-formal education, training in income
generating skills for women and youth and social mobilization for CSD interventions.
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Appropriate technology
Since the 1950s, UNICEF has been active in promoting appropriate technology
aimed at improving the nutrition of children, lightening the work-load of women,
making health and education services more readily available to the rural and urban
poor, reducing dependence on non-renewable sources of energy and encouraging
community self-reliance. Thus, at various times, UNICEF has supported milk conser
vation plants, improved family food preparation and preservation techniques, fuel-effi
cient cooking stoves, biogas and small water turbines, solar pumps and refrigerators.
Investment in the research and development of such appropriate technologies as
can have far-reaching impact on the well-being of the developing world’s poor and, as
the Brundtland Commission has recognized, on the whole world’s environment, has
been woefully inadequate. Much of the research and development work in this area
has been done by NGOs, frequently on limited budgets and often isolated from ade
quate technical support. Moreover, UNICEF involvement has been uneven, given
other pressing priorities and resource constraints.
As part of its other sectoral, as well as multidisciplinary actions, UNICEF could in
tensify its support in this area. The following are some of the more promising fields in
which UNICEF is already involved and plans to intensify its support.
As mentioned earlier, the three most time-consuming and demanding tasks con
fronting poor women are fetching water, collecting firewood and fodder and agricul
tural work. In each of these areas, the use of more appropriate techniques and
technologies needs to be encouraged.
In recent years, remarkable technical advances have been made in the use of
polyvinyl chloride pipes for gravity-fed water supply systems, lighter and cheaper drill
ing rigs and simpler and more reliable hand-pumps, all of which have greatly reduced
the per capita cost of water supply and simplified training and maintenance require
ments. These developments, along with greater sensitivity to protecting water sour
ces, spring capping, rain-water catchments and improved water storage techniques,
contribute considerably to child health, women’s emancipation and environmental
protection. UNICEF co-operation in this area will continue to expand.
As for fuel and fodder collection tasks, UNICEF has co-operated in various
countries in small-scale social forestry programmes, village wood lots, alternative
cookstoves which economize on fuel wood, operate on biogas or utilize solar energy.
These schemes help reduce the drudgery of women, protect their health and that of
their children (e.g. through smokeless stoves that help to reduce respiratory diseases
27
and eye infections) and contribute, through reforestation or reduction of deforestation,
to agricultural productivity and environmental protection. Though their value is recog
nized, such activities are at present peripheral additions to projects with other central
objectives. Wherever such actions make a critical difference to the well-being of
women and children and, depending on other country programme considerations,
UNICEF should give higher priority to them in the future.
In the area of food production, storage and processing, there is also scope for
UNICEF, in co-operation with FAO, IFAD, WFP and others, to promote techniques and
technologies that are energy-efficient and supportive of environmental protection.
UNICEF support, along with that of WHO and others in the area of health care
technological innovations, ranging from improved baby-weighing scales to the use of
solar panels to power refrigerators to keep vaccines cold, also contribute to improved
human health and ultimately a safer environment.
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IV. CO-ORDINATION WITH OTHER AGENCIES
In addition to ensuring that UNICEF-assisted activities are environmentally sound
and sustainable, the organization will seek to advocate that development projects sup
ported by other agencies are also similarly sound. Accordingly, UNICEF will co-or
dinate its actions and advocacy with those of Governments, other agencies and
NGOs. UNICEF experience in social mobilization at national and international levels
and actions at the community level could be used to heighten popular awareness and
action in support of sustainable development. UNICEF views this as a relevant role
because children-its clientele—have a larger stake than adults in a sustainable future.
It is they who will rejoice in or endure whatever future the present generation passes
on to them.
As part of this collaborative effort, UNEP and UNICEF are collaborating in the
preparation of a report on the state of the world’s environment from the perspective of
children to be published in 1990. UNICEF will also actively participate in and con
tribute to discussions of sustainable development and the environment in such inter
agency forums as the Joint Consultative Group on Policy, comprising the United
Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Population Fund, IFAD, WFP
and UNICEF, the Administrative Committee on Co-ordination mechanism of the United
Nations and the appropriate regional and global consultations to formulate strategies
for the fourth United Nations development decade, as well as other relevant meetings.
Many NGOs are active in promoting the conservation of natural resources, en
vironmental education and awareness, as well as research and experimentation with
environmentally-oriented development projects. UNICEF will actively explore the
development of closer links with such organizations, especially in developing
countries.
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V. UNICEF EXECUTIVE BOARD DECISION 1989/18
On the recommendation of the Programme Committee,
The Executive Board,
Approves the recommendations contained in paragraphs 34 and 87-93 of docu
ment E/ICEF/1989/L.6 as the broad policy framework for UNICEF action in support of
environment and sustainable development as requested by the General Assembly in
its resolution 42/186.
For the facility of the reader, paragraph 34 is reproduced below, as well as the
recommendation contained in paragraphs 87-93 of document E/ICEF/1989/L.6
referred to in the decision of the 1989 UNICEF Executive Board:
Paragraph 34 of the document E/ICEFU989/L.6 is to be found on pp. 16-17 of the
present publication. Paragraphs 31 and 33 referred to below under b) are the second and
fourth on p. 16 of the present publication.
“To complement the above, the Executive Director believes that UNICEF could
and should do still more to promote actions that are conducive to the protection of the
environment and sustainability of development while meeting the urgent needs of
children and mothers. To facilitate this it is proposed that:
a)
In the annual and mid-term reviews of ongoing country programmes,
UNICEF representatives should be guided by the recommendations of this
policy paper, and should seek, in consultation with the host Government and
other partners, to enhance environmental components where they exist and
introduce such components if they are missing;
b)
Priority should be given to seeking funding for those projects with strong en
vironmental components that have already been approved by the Executive
Board for supplementary funding but which remain unfunded (see paras. 31
and 33);
c)
To facilitate the addition or strengthening of environmental components in on
going country programmes that are currently weak in this regard or where
the potential for significant action is identified during the forthcoming annual
review and mid-term reviews, the Executive Director is recommending that
the Executive Board approve an interim project to support environmental ac
tions (E/ICEF/1989/P/L.29). The proposal seeks $3 million in general resour
ces and $3 million in supplementary funding to support planning, project
preparation and specific actions over the next two years, by which time en
vironmentally oriented actions will become regular components of country
programmes;
d)
In all future country programmes, UNICEF representatives will be asked to
systematically analyse the environmental impact of proposed actions and,
where appropriate, to include programme components that are specifically
designed to contribute to environmental protection and sustainability.”
Paragraphs 87-93 of the document E/ICEF/1989/L.6 are to be found below.
"Most UNICEF-assisted country programmes are essentially multidisciplinary, in
volving a complex interrelationship between social and economic factors. In propos
ing that environmental factors also be included in the UNICEF programming process,
it is not intended that formal analyses for environmental impact should be carried out
in all cases, but to suggest that the environmental implications should be recognized
and appropriate adjustments made. To facilitate this, it is recommended that when
ever UNICEF undertakes to prepare or update the situation analysis of children and
women in the context of its country programming exercise, it should contain a brief
chapter or sections highlighting issues of environmental concern not only for the
present but also for future generations.
Within its mandate, and in accordance with current organizational priorities ap
proved by the Executive Board, UNICEF-supported development programmes tend to
be generally environment-friendly. Looked at in finer detail, however, some individual
projects or sectoral activities might offer greater opportunities for enhancing sus
tainability through more careful design, additional components or deliberate actions.
It is, therefore, recommended that environmental considerations be explicitly included
in the process of country programme preparation, review and evaluation.
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Some programmes more readily lend themselves to environment-enhancing ac
tions than others. UNICEF-supported programmes in such areas of water supply and
sanitation, urban basic services, education and women in development offer par
ticularly good opportunities for including environment-enhancing components. It is
recommended that, as part of these programmes, UNICEF provide increased support
to such actions as social forestry and village wood lots, fuel-efficient cooking stoves
and other appropriate technologies that reduce the drudgery of women and promote
the well-being of today’s children as well as those of future generations.
The project proposal (paragraph 34 (c)) being submitted to the Executive Board
at its 1989 session for approval in the amount of $3 million in general resources and $3
million in supplementary funds would help complement already approved program
mes in this field. In addition, the attention of interested donors is drawn to the ap
proximately $150 million of unfunded environmentally-related project proposals that
have already been approved for supplementary funding by the Executive Board.
All UNICEF staff involved in programme planning, implementation, evaluation
and general advocacy must be aware of the kinds of environmental concerns voiced
in the Brundtland Commission’s report. It is recommended that these issues be in
cluded in the appropriate training and orientation programmes for staff.
UNICEF regional and country offices are encouraged to collaborate with UNEF^
other relevant United Nations agencies, multi-bilateral donors and organs of the host
Governments to ensure sustainability of actions for children through complementary
actions of different partners in development. In so doing, knowledgeable local con
sultants, NGOs and research institutions should be consulted.
UNICEF experience in social mobilization, its mandate for advocacy on behalf of
children and its ability to work at community level in multisectoral programmes should
be utilized to the maximum to promote development that improves the well-being of
today’s children while protecting the environment for the benefit of future generations.”
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VI. UNICEF EXECUTIVE BOARD DECISION 1989/6
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development:
Response to the Economic and Social Council by the UNICEF Executive Board
On the recommendation of the Programme Committee,
The Executive Board,
Recalling General Assembly resolution 43/196 of 20 December 1988, which
calls for the views of the appropriate organs, organizations and programmes of the
United Nations system on the objectives, content and scope of the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development,
Invites the Economic and Social Council, in its further preparatory work for the
above-mentioned conference, to take into account the ideas and expertise of UNICEF
on the issues of "Children and the Environment" set out in document E/ICEF/1989/L.6
and approved by the Executive Board.
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