22 March 2008

World Water Day

Today is World Water Day, a United Nations initiative that grew out of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. Water looms as a major global issue in coming years, as this digram of population and water availability shows:

Source: Water for Life, UN Water: New York, 2005.

As you can see there are major disparities in the distribution of population and water availability around the globe. This is most glaringly the case in Asia, which has 60% of the world's population but only has 36% of global water resources.

Already a number of HIAs that have been conducted in NSW have highlighted the importance of water and water supply in protecting and promoting population health. Water is already a critical resource and it will only become more so in the future. It is incumbent on us as HIA practitioners to become familiar with the health impacts of changes to water availability.

Interesting Links

19 March 2008

IAIA Health Quarterly March 2008

From Ben Cave, Co-Chair of the International Association for Impact Assessment Health Section

The latest issue of the IAIA HIA Quarterly is available for download from the IAIA website [PDF 380 Kb].

This issue includes the following articles:
  • Ben Cave reports on a meeting between the World Health Organization, the
  • International Finance Corporation and the World Bank;
  • Maria João Heitor writes about a European meeting in Portugal looking at
  • Health, and Health Systems, Impact Assessment;
  • Mathias Wismar and Kelly Ernst write about a new publication on the
  • effectiveness of HIA;
  • Ben Harris-Roxas reports on the South East Asia and Oceania HIA Conference;
  • Teresa Lavin and the HIA team at the Institute of Public Health in Ireland
  • team describe the 8th International HIA conference held in Dublin;
  • Dianne Katscherian describes the forthcoming session on climate change and
  • health at IAIA08; and
  • there is a round up of new publications and websites and forthcoming events.
We will soon issue a call for contributions to the next Quarterly via HIA listservs.

New South Wales HIA eNews Issue 19: HIA2007 Conference Special Issue

The latest copy of the New South Wales Health Impact Assessment Project eNews is available for download [PDF 960Kb].

In this issue:
  • HIA2007 South East Asia and Oceania HIA Conference
  • Health Impact Assessment: A Practical Guide
  • Thailand: Recent Experiences
  • Participate in the HIA2008 Conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand
  • NSW Developmental HIA Sites : Coffs Harbour and Oran Park/Turner Road HIAs
  • HIA Training 27-29 February 2008
  • NZ HIA Support Unit : Building capacity for HIA in New Zealand
  • To HIA or Not to HIA?
  • Mental Wellbeing Impact Assessment A Toolkit from the UK
  • What’s New? HIA Publications and Events
Past issues of the eNews can be downloaded from www.hiaconnect.edu.au/hia_e-news.htm

The New South Wales HIA eNews is produced by the Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity at the University of New South Wales, Australia as part of the NSW HIA Project funded by NSW Health.