Emerging Strategies for Healthy Urban Governance

Urban health promotion is not simply a matter of the right interventions, or even the necessary resources. Urban (and indeed global) health depends to an important extent on governance, the institutions and processes through which societies manage the course of events. This paper describes the concept of governance, distinguishing between reforms aimed at improving how government works and innovations that more fundamentally reinvent governance by developing new institutions and processes of local stakeholder control. The paper highlights strategies urban governors can use to maximize their influence on the national and international decisions that structure urban life. It concludes with some observations on the limitations of local governance strategies and the importance of establishing a “virtuous circuit” of governance through which urban dwellers play a greater role in the formation and implementation of policy at the national and global levels

Renewed and emerging concerns over the production and emission of ozone-depleting substances

Stratospheric ozone depletion, first observed in the 1980s, has been caused by the increased production and use of substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), halons and other chlorine-containing and bromine-containing compounds, collectively termed ozone-depleting substances (ODSs). Following controls on the production of major, long-lived ODSs by the Montreal Protocol, the ozone layer is now showing initial signs of recovery and is anticipated to return to pre-depletion levels in the mid-to-late twenty-first century, likely 2050–2060. These return dates assume widespread compliance with the Montreal Protocol and, thereby, continued reductions in ODS emissions. However, recent observations reveal increasing emissions of some controlled (for example, CFC-11, as in eastern China) and uncontrolled substances (for example, very short-lived substances (VSLSs)). Indeed, the emissions of a number of uncontrolled VSLSs are adding significant amounts of ozone-depleting chlorine to the atmosphere. In this Review, we discuss recent emissions of both long-lived ODSs and halogenated VSLSs, and how these might lead to a delay in ozone recovery. Continued improvements in observational tools and modelling approaches are needed to assess these emerging challenges to a timely recovery of the ozone layer