Commemorating 10 years of GAHP

The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) celebrated its tenth anniversary in July 2022.

Over the past decade, GAHP has worked fiercely to bring pollution to the forefront as a major public health crisis since a group of 20 international organizations and government agencies gathered together to advance the inclusion of pollution on the global environmental and health agendas.

Specifically, during the first five years GAHP achieved two major goals:

• GAHP and its members were instrumental in the inclusion of all types of pollution – air water and soil – included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the Health Target 3.9, Sustainable Consumption and Production Target 12.4, and as a cross-cutting issue directly related to 15 other SDGs.

• GAHP launched the publication of the groundbreaking Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health and its shocking findings, such as pollution to known to be the cause of 9 million premature deaths each year.

In the last five years enabled GAHP to be established as an independent legal entity in Switzerland, where GAHP now has its Secretariat. During this time GAHP achieved the following:

• GAHP launched its Health and Pollution Action Planning (HPAP) program, designed and implemented with many GAHP members, including Pure Earth, UN Industrial Development Organization and the UN Development Program. The HPAP Program aim to help countries prioritize and respond to their most urgent health and pollution problems and it has being implemented in more than ten countries.

• Pollution was included alongside climate change and biodiversity – to form a triumvirate of global environmental challenges identified by UN Environment Program.

• Published the 2022 Update to the 2017 Lancet Commission in The Lancet Planetary Health.

• Supported policy efforts for the 2022 UN Environmental Assembly to establish a new Science Policy Panel on chemicals, wastes, and the prevention of pollution.

Where will the next decade take us?

GAHP hopes for the launching of a major, global programmatic response to pollution – both at the international and national levels – that can truly show reductions in exposures to pollution, especially air and chemical pollution caused by industrialization and urbanization – where emissions are worsening and impacts on health are growing. By collaborating, continuing to raise awareness, including establishing a science policy panel to address chemicals, wastes and pollution, and building capacity, GAHP aims to catalyze action in its member countries.

Join us to help make a difference in public health – and the environment – globally.