The Spanish Government presents the “Health and Environment Strategic Plan” aimed at protecting people from environmental risks (documents are only available in Spanish or Catalan)

The Ministry of Health, in coordination with the Ministry of the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, has launched the Health and Environment Strategic Plan. A plan that will be in force until 2026 and that stablishes the actions that must be carried out to reduce the impact on health of the main environmental factors.

 

From this environmental perspective, four risk areas area defined:

1) Climate change and health: climate risks, extreme temperatures and disease transmitting vectors.

2) Pollution: chemicals, waste, air and water quality and industrial pollution.

3) Radiations: natural radioactivity, electromagnetic fields and ultraviolet radiation.

4) Habitat and health: environments and healthy cities.

 

The strategic document is the first of its characteristics to be carried out in Spain and works in the same line with the commitment that the World Health Organization (WHO) intends to face the environmental risks of our time, promoting the “One Health”, which recognizes that human health is intimately connected with food security, planet health, living beings, ecosystems, etc

 

In this way, let us remember that the Barcelona Provincial Council, under the join coordination of the areas of Public Health and Urban Planning of Catalonia, have prepared the guide Consideration to be integrated into the assessment of the impact on Health in the strategic environmental assessment, to try to join key criteria for health in the drafting of municipal urban planning plans.