Articles
DR. Ahmed Hany: Governance for Environment, Health and Sustainable Development
Governance is the process of the interaction between organized societies over a social system that belong to the society. For examples the interaction between the government and the institutions on the land it governs, between the market forces and retailers who work according to the market rules. The difference between governance and politics is that in political institutions not all members of the institution agree to the decision taken by the leaders, however in governance the members of the organized society abide to the objectives devised by the strategies of the top management whether it is a government, a board of trustees or any organization that employs workers to execute decisions within the frame of laws and its imposed rules. Therefore, governance is about the administration not about devising strategies and it unifies the work done by workers to achieve targets to satisfy the community into which it executes its allowed power and answering any questions about its decisions to satisfy the community. In short governance is about legal power and accountability. To further explain the difference between politics and governance, in politics green parties may have a vision to improve the environment that is different from the governmental views that are determined by the budget and resources within the national plans. The members of the parties have the right to object and even to ban the governmental actions. However the governmental employees will do the best to communicate, interact with organizations and to achieve the governmental objectives even if some of those employees are active members in opponent parties. Another example if a surgeon wants to do a surgical operation following a certain method but the hospital protocols states chose another method to be applied and approved by the medical director the that surgeon should work according to the hospital’s protocols.
The World Bank defines governance as the manner in which power is exercised in the management of country’s economic and social resources for development.
The United Nation Development Program insisted on legality, legitimacy and participation. It defines governance as the rules of the political system to solve conflicts between actors (legality), and the proper functioning of institutions and their acceptance by the public (legitimacy) and the efficacy of the government to achieve consensus (participation).
The effective governance:
There are two types of governance, the internal governances comprises the national polices and services that are legal and accepted by the inhabitants and the external governance that answers to the international community. The relationship between the internal and external governance is clearest in environment and health sectors in which problems are crossing national borders with little control over the spread from a place to another. The proper decisions in a place affects positively the international community and violations of decisions taken by international organizations may have a drastic effect on all. If a country with limited resources decided to abandon plans to reduce carbon dioxide emission, the international plans to achieve the times target may not be met. And if a country did not notify a certain disease that was spreading in an epidemic manner, the international community would have a really difficult task to contain and control the disease. The effective governance usually exposes corruption as transparency is essential component of its process. The Total Quality Management gives effective governance best chances to be accepted by inhabitants. Both Effective governance, transparency and Total quality management lead to growth, welfare and prosperity with sustainable development.
The Ineffective Governance:
The absence of the effective governance disintegrate the state’s capacity to supply the inhabitants with justice and freedom. This leads to social fragmentation, violent conflicts, bad services and inability to develop the socio-sphere of the environment with domination of the techno-sphere over the biosphere consuming resources and producing pollutants that affect the health of humans and degradation of lands. The resultant negative growth should be dealt with before any successful sustainable growth could be achieved.
It is a concept in political ecology which promotes environmental policies for sustainable human activities. The International Union for Conservation of Nature defines Environmental Governance as the multi-level interactions, local, national and international that coordinate processes in state, market and civil society to control the consuming of resources to attain sustainable development. Enforcing laws and applying environmental policies are the keystones to achieve the goals of both improving the environment and achieving sustainable growth. The non-governmental organizations, NGOs have an essential role to activate the civil society integrating their efforts with the media. The more a nation has effective governance the more it receives international support to improve its local and national environment and to solve its problems. The carbon dioxide emission trends, the governmental success in managing the protectorates and preserving the threatened species from extinction give the governmental reports high credibility in the external governance arena transforming the national requirements to international priorities for aiding that nation to solve its environmental problems.
Health Governance:
The World Health Organization defined governance in health sectors as wide range of steering actions and rules to carry out functions and to take decisions to achieve the national health policy objectives. This process strengthens the global health situations as well. Globally the synergistic policies of nations leads to emerging global actions to improve the health state of all people. Standardization of the process is an essential component of the heath governance. To achieve standard level of the health services, the rules of the Total Quality Management (TQM) are essential part. When TQM is applied by the health care workers, at least there will be a certain level of safety. The Effective Health Governance is not independent as the presence of effective educational system and supply systems are complementary. The social system affects much the health governance.
Conclusion:
Governance and policy are not the same. Governance is the processes the administration does to achieve the objectives of the policies’ plans. Both internal and external governance affect each other. The TQM is essential to build the effective governance. In environmental and health sectors effective governance is essential for the sustainable development and inhabitants’ satisfaction.
