Good health and wellbeing require a clean and harmonious environment in which physical, psychological, social and aesthetic factors are all given their due importance. The environment should be regarded as a resource for improving living conditions and increasing wellbeing.
The preferred approach should be to promote the principle of "prevention is better than cure".
The health of every individual, especially those in vulnerable and high-risk groups, must be protected. Special attention should be paid to disadvantaged groups.
Action on problems of the environment and health should be based on the best available scientific information.
New policies, technologies and developments should be introduced with prudence and not before appropriate prior assessment of the potential environmental and health impact. There should be a responsibility to show that they are not harmful to health or the environment.
The health of individuals and communities should take clear precedence over considerations of economy and trade.
All aspects of socioeconomic development that relate to the impact of the environment on health and wellbeing must be considered.
The entire flow of chemicals, materials, products and waste should be managed in such a way as to achieve optimal use of natural resources and to cause minimal contamination.
Governments, public authorities and private bodies should aim at both preventing and reducing adverse effects caused by potentially hazardous agents and degraded urban and rural environments.
Environmental standards need to be continually reviewed to take account of new knowledge about the environment and health and of the effects of future economic development. Where applicable such standards should be harmonized.
The principle should be applied whereby every public and private body that causes or may cause damage to the environment is made financially responsible (the polluter pays principle).
Criteria and procedures to quantify, monitor and evaluate environmental and health damage should be further developed and implemented.
Trade and economic policies and development assistance programmes affecting the environment and health in foreign countries should comply with all the above principles. Export of environmental and health hazards should be avoided.
Development assistance should promote sustainable development and the safeguarding and improvement of human health as one of its integral components.
