Limits to participation : the struggle for environmental improvement in Moreno, Argentina

Contenido: versión española, p. 1-105; version inglés, p. 107-208The paper examines joint efforts made by local government, a non-governmental organization (NGO) and several community organisations, to improve through participatory processes the environmental conditions in the municipality of Moreno (Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires). It provides insight into policies that create environmental citizenship, and explores the methodological and participatory basis of policy processes along with ways to strengthen them. Many of Moreno’s serious environmental problems affect households directly; residents face difficulties in securing access to drinking water and sanitation, waste is not picked up on a regular basis, and the rain runoff and sewage system is inadequate. (English starts p.107

Sistema de salud en Argentina

Área de Economí

Erratum:Integrated approaches to address the social determinants of health for reducing health inequity (Journal of Urban Health DOI: 10.1007/s11524-007- 9173-7)

The social and physical environments have long since been recognized as important determinants of health. People in urban settings are exposed to a variety of health hazards that are interconnected with their health effects. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have underlined the multidimensional nature of poverty and the connections between health and social conditions and present an opportunity to move beyond narrow sectoral interventions and to develop comprehensive social responses and participatory processes that address the root causes of health inequity. Considering the complexity and magnitude of health, poverty, and environmental issues in cities, it is clear that improvements in health and health equity demand not only changes in the physical and social environment of cities, but also an integrated approach that takes into account the wider socioeconomic and contextual factors affecting health. Integrated or multilevel approaches should address not only the immediate, but also the underlying and particularly the fundamental causes at societal level of related health issues. The political and legal organization of the policy-making process has been identified as a major determinant of urban and global health, as a result of the role it plays in creating possibilities for participation, empowerment, and its influence on the content of public policies and the distribution of scarce resources. This paper argues that it is essential to adopt a long-term multisectoral approach to address the social determinants of health in urban settings. For comprehensive approaches to address the social determinants of health effectively and at multiple levels, they need explicitly to tackle issues of participation, governance, and the politics of power, decision making, and empowerment

Fortaleciendo la resiliencia al clima en ciudades de América Latina

Climate and Development Alliance (CDKN)Fundación Futuro Latin America (FFLA