Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
While COVID-19 has receded, its impact on global health remains pronounced. The pandemic has severely disrupted essential health services, triggered an increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression, lowered global life expectancy, derailed progress towards ending HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, and halted two decades of work towards making health coverage universal.
Goal 3 and the environment
While the burden falls heaviest on the poor and most vulnerable, almost no one is immune from pollution. Some 99 per cent of people, for example, breathe unclean air. Pollution is the most common environment-related cause of death and illness, with countless people around the world exposed to pathogen-laced water and soil and a range of potentially toxic chemicals.
At the same time, humans are also pushing deeper into once-wild spaces, bringing them into closer contact with disease-carrying animals, while pollution is partially feeding the spread of drug-resistant bacteria.
Addressing these environmental challenges could have a dramatic impact on human health. As many as 13 million fatalities could be prevented every year by making the environment healthier.
UNEP’s work on Goal 3
Worldwide, pollution is the single greatest threat to human health. Every year, air pollution alone causes more than 7 million premature deaths – or one in nine fatalities. UNEP has spent decades helping to minimize the toll that pollution is taking on humanity, especially on the least fortunate, who suffer disproportionately from its fallout.
UNEP works closely with governments, industry, and civil society organizations to develop solutions that allow for the sound management of a range of toxic substances. UNEP’s work has helped to counter air pollution, limit industrial runoff, including from mercury, and stem the flow of plastic into the ocean. UNEP also spearheaded the effort to phase out leaded fuel, a drive that saves an estimated 1.2 million lives annually.
UNEP has joined three other institutions (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in a global effort to support what is known as the One Health approach. This initiative aims to improve the well-being of humans, animals, and ecosystems. The effort is based on the idea that all three of those elements are intertwined and includes a focus on anti-microbial resistance.
The report explores the environmental dimensions of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), offering a comprehensive overview of scientific findings on the subject. It provides actionable evidence of the importance of the environment in the development, transmission and spread of AMR, and it shows that the environmental dimensions of AMR are multifaceted and the response rests on collaboration between sectors.
The report takes a step back and considers the root causes of the emergence and spread of coronavirus and other ‘zoonoses’—diseases that are transmitted between animals and humans. The report also offers a set of practical recommendations that can help policymakers prevent and respond to future disease outbreaks.
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