Past team

In January, GAHP Acting Executive Director Rachael Kupka and GAHP board member Hossam Abou Zeid joined a global gathering of think tanks at Think20 or T20 in Saudi Arabia to help ensure recommendations provided to G20 members address pollution and health.

The meeting opened with Sherpa H.E. Fahad Almubarak outlining objectives. Safeguarding the planet was identified as a key priority with clean energy, clean water, sustainable development and more.

To widen the discussion on pollution, GAHP submitted a policy brief on climate change and health.

At a discussion of food systems, we were glad to see that “improved governance of water, land, soils and forests” was being addressed because food grown on polluted land reaches us all through the global supply chain.

We brought up the connection between pollution-free energy and toxic-free food. Among the issues we called attention to was the global use of lead-acid (car) batteries as a major energy source, which has resulted in systemic global lead poisoning and pollution due to the unsafe, informal recycling of such batteries.

We reminded participants that pollution does NOT need to accompany economic growth.

We will be following up with contacts made at the meeting.