Climate change and health in Maldives: Protecting our common future.

The term “sustainable development” was first defined in 1987, in the seminal report, Our common future, subsequently more commonly known as The Brundtland report.1 The report was the synthesis of 3 years’ work by the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, who would go on to be Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) from 1998 to 2003. The Brundtland report was pivotal in establishing that the environment cannot be considered in isolation from human activity, and that development is not simply a niche activity whereby richer nations support their poorer counterparts through “development assistance”. As famously emphasized by Dr Brundtland, “... the ‘environment’ is where we all live; and ‘development’ is what we all do in attempting to improve our lot within that abode. The two are inseparable”. Three decades since The Brundtland report was published, we are now in the era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.2 The SDGs provide clear guidelines and targets for all countries to adopt. Almost all the SDGs are directly related to health or contribute to health indirectly and, as highlighted in the articles of this issue of the WHO South-East Asia Journal of Public Health, a clear and present danger that imperils achievement of the SDGs is continuing climate change.