Realising the health and wellbeing of adolescents

Adolescence is a critical stage of life characterised by rapid biological, emotional, and social development. It is during this time that every person develops the capabilities required for a productive, healthy, and satisfying life. In order to make a healthy transition into adulthood, adolescents need to have access to health education, including education on sexuality1; quality health services, including sexual and reproductive; and a supportive environment both at home and in communities and countries.The global community increasingly recognises these vital needs of adolescents, and there is an emerging consensus that investing intensively in adolescents’ health and development is not only key to improving their survival and wellbeing but critical for the success of the post-2015 development agenda.2 The suggested inclusion of adolescent health in the United Nations secretary general’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health is an expression of this growing awareness and represents an unprecedented opportunity to place adolescents on the political map beyond 2015. Ensuring that every adolescent has the knowledge, skills, and opportunities for a healthy, productive life and enjoyment of all human rights3 is essential for achieving improved health, social justice, gender equality, and other development goals.We argue that the priority in the revised Every Women Every Child Global Strategy needs to be giving adolescents a voice, expanding their choices and control over their bodies, and enabling them to develop the capabilities required for a productive, healthy, and satisfying life. We call for a global, participatory movement to improve the health of the world’s adolescents as part of a broader agenda to improve their wellbeing and uphold their rights

Urban mobility and transportation

Urban areas are developing quickly, innovative technologies grant enlarged scope for mobility management. According to literature, 50% of world population and as much as 75% of EU population live in cities, where the majority of GDP is generated. CO2 is responsible of 75% GHG worldwide and transportation is worth around 20% of this share and the contribution is rising, in particular in urban areas. Besides pollution and noise, also collisions (70% of which in urban areas) and congestion - which is worth around 1% of EU GDP in terms of time lost due to delay suffered - are negative externalities. Finally, due to urban sprawl induced by car-centric cultural regimen under the justification of cheaper land costs, the need to travel has been growing notwithstanding economic downturns, resulting in an increased threat of social exclusion for those who cannot afford a car. The attitude towards urban transportation has shifted from laissez-faire to deep concern: as far as EU is concerned, the Action plan on Urban Mobility (2009) recommended the adoption of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), the 2011 White Paper envisaged SUMPs to become mandatory for cities over 100,000 inhabitants and a base requisite to access to EU Funds. The 2013 Guidelines and the 2015 EC Urban Mobility Package have further established the SUMP policy. In 2015, UN adopted the “Agenda for sustainable development 2030” (7 out of 17 objectives deal with transportation) and a new worldwide agreement on climate has been signed in Paris. Finally, the funding foreseen by EU research project H2020 (8,2% of the total budget allocated on transportation) will further encourage the investigation of new strategies and technologies. SUMPs emphasize long term vision, the active involvement of citizen and stakeholders (Priester et al., 2014), the setting of targets, measures and a radical reform of regulatory and funding framework to avoid start-and-stop approach (Hickman et al., 2013; Stephenson et al., 2018). Nevertheless, the commitment level is different: developing countries would rather urge to build more and modern infrastructures, leaving the environment as a secondary priority. SUMPs are expected to find solution to road congestion and policy fragmentation between documents (Baidan, 2016). According to EU CIVITAS project’s outcomes, the implementation of SUMPs can be hindered by pro-car & infrastructure building lobbyism, inefficient planning - monitoring – dissemination, lack of stakeholder involvement and support, excessive outsourcing, fluctuation of political commitment over time (Ibeas et al., 2011; Persia et al., 2016), inadequate coordination among policy tiers and plans (Stephenson et al., 2018), unsupportive or inappropriate regulation and financial structures, poor or missing data and reliance to business-as-usual scenarios. The topics facing less acceptance have been accessibility, logistic, traffic control, cycling and walking measures (Bruhova Foltynova & Jordova, 2014)