sustainable development 20 years on from the ... - José Eli da Veiga

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In Latin America and the Caribbean, information and communications technologies (ICTs), like
some older technologies, have brought with them their own type of waste (such as persistent organic,
electronic and nuclear waste, as well as radiation and residues from the automobile industry) (see
chapter II, section B.10). Unless appropriate infrastructure is set up for its disposal, this waste will pose a
further challenge for the health of Latin American and Caribbean populations.
(g)
Non-communicable chronic diseases
Non-communicable chronic diseases not only reduce the productivity of individual sufferers, they
also represent a recurring, lifelong cost which deepens people’s vulnerability and makes it more difficult
for them to overcome poverty —or increases their chances of slipping back into it. Chronic diseases are
now the leading cause of mortality and represent 78% of all deaths in the Americas (PAHO, <strong>20</strong>10b). Of
these, 38% were caused by cardiovascular conditions, 25% by cancer, 8.3% by chronic respiratory disease
and 6% by diabetes mellitus (PAHO, <strong>20</strong>11a). The demand for related services places enormous pressure
on sufferers of chronic diseases, on their families and certainly on health services, whose response
capacity and sustainability become seriously strained.
4. Food security
The right to food is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 as part of the right
to a decent standard of living and is enshrined as well in article 11 of the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states in
General Observation number 12 (paragraph 6): “The right to adequate food is realized when every man,
woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to
adequate food or means for its procurement” (CESCR, 1999). The right to food must therefore be
understood in a broad sense to include physical and economic access to adequate food or to the means to
obtain it, and not in the narrow sense of the endowment of energy, protein and other nutrients needed to
survive. It has also been recognized that the right to adequate food must be achieved progressively.
Nevertheless, States still have a basic obligation to adopt the measures needed to reduce and relieve
hunger, including in the event of natural disasters or other contingencies.
Hunger and undernutrition are the most dramatic expressions of poverty. The number of people
suffering from hunger decreased between 1990 and <strong>20</strong>06 (see figure I.13), but this progress was thrown
into reverse by the food crisis of <strong>20</strong>07-<strong>20</strong>08 and the economic crisis of <strong>20</strong>08-<strong>20</strong>09 and at the end of <strong>20</strong>11
had yet to regain pre-crisis levels. In <strong>20</strong>10, there were still over 52 million undernourished people in the
region and the outlook is not particularly encouraging in view of food price <strong>development</strong>s —between
1992 and <strong>20</strong>11, the FAO food price index rose by a full 100%. 7
7
See [online] http:// www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/foodpricesindex/en/ [date of reference: December <strong>20</strong>11].