Université Laval, Québec city, Canada.
Global Health. 2019 Jul 19;15(1):47. doi: 10.1186/s12992-019-0493-7.
Recent work in international relations theory argues that international regimes do not develop in isolation, as previously assumed, but evolve as open systems that interact with other regimes. The implications of this insight's for sustainable development remains underexplored. Even thought environmental protection and health promotion are clearly interconnected at the impact level, it remains unclear how global environmental governance interacts with global health governance at the institutional level. In order to fill this gap, this article aims to assess how environmental treaties contribute to global health governance.
To assess how environmental treaties contribute to global health governance, we conducted a content analysis of 2280 international environmental treaties. For each of these treaties, we measure the type and number of health-related provisions in these treaties. The result is the Health and Environment Interplay Database (HEIDI), which we make public with the publication of this article. This new database reveals that more than 300 environmental treaties have health-related provisions.
We conclude that the global environmental regime contributes significantly to the institutionalization of the global health regime, considering that the health regime includes itself very few treaties focusing primarily on health. When reflecting on how global governance can improve population health, decision makers should not only consider the instruments available to them within the realm of global health institutions. They should broaden their perspectives to integrate the contribution of other global regimes, such as the global environmental regime.
国际关系理论的最新研究认为，国际制度并非如先前假设的那样孤立发展，而是作为与其他制度相互作用的开放系统而演变。这一观点对可持续发展的影响仍未得到充分探索。尽管环境保护和促进健康在影响层面上明显相互关联，但在制度层面上，全球环境治理与全球卫生治理如何相互作用仍不清楚。为了填补这一空白，本文旨在评估环境条约如何促进全球卫生治理。
为了评估环境条约如何促进全球卫生治理，我们对 2280 项国际环境条约进行了内容分析。对于每一项条约，我们都衡量了这些条约中与健康相关的规定的类型和数量。结果是健康与环境相互作用数据库（HEIDI），我们在本文发表的同时公开了这个数据库。这个新数据库显示，超过 300 项环境条约有与健康相关的规定。
我们的结论是，考虑到卫生制度本身很少有条约主要关注卫生，全球环境制度对全球卫生制度的制度化做出了重大贡献。当反思全球治理如何改善人口健康时，决策者不仅应考虑全球卫生机构领域内可供他们使用的工具，还应拓宽视野，将其他全球制度（如全球环境制度）的贡献纳入其中。
