A Healthy Environment Is Our Right. Let’s Protect It.

The quality of the environment in Kosovo is negatively affecting people’s health and wellbeing. People are being exposed to multiple environmental threats at once; pollution from the accumulated industrial pollutants, and the weak waste management systems using outdated approaches. Kosovo has already started experiencing a range of impacts related to climate change. The increased temperatures, extreme weather events, water scarcity, and infectious and vector diseases are an added burden to people’s health and wellbeing.

In 2022, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring a clean and healthy environment as a human right. UNDP Kosovo is committed to mobilizing and taking action to protect this human right. Through the joint UN project - Healthier Kosovo – UNDP, together with its partners, supports building resilience towards environmental and public health threats, by setting up a new and re-focused approach to address the most pressing environmental health risks. 

Through Healthier Kosovo, UNDP is helping drive this change through working closely with local institutions, academia, civil society and young changemakers to make health and environment a top priority.

Strengthening inter-institutional cooperation is crucial for ensuring improved environmental quality and better public health.

Healthier Kosovo 2 is a joint UN project that is focused on improving the health and resilience of Kosovo's population in the face of environmental health threats. The project covers areas such as air pollution, COVID-19-related waste in health facilities, and the impacts of climate change on health. It is a collaborative effort between UNDP, UNV and WHO, aimed at supporting environmental and health institutions in Kosovo with capacity development and technical assistance. This project is generously funded by Luxembourg. 

The Healthier Kosovo Project has been supporting Kosovo’s environmental and health institutions with capacity development and technical assistance. A better management of medical waste has become possible with the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), created in cooperation with the Ministry of Health.

Moreover, a faster and a more effectively response to environmental risks is enabled through the new software for collecting and monitoring environmental real time data, developed for the Kosovo Hydrometeorological Institute. Municipalities have also been directly engaged and supported in reducing air pollution locally. HK team has helped develop strategies and tools and ultimately draft the Local Action Plans for Air Quality (LAPAQs). All this is expected to lead to a strengthened resilience to the impacts of environmental threats.

Given the fact that the environment and health issues can be affected by the actions and decisions of individual, the Healthier Kosovo project has been engaging youth and all the community in addressing the challenges of air pollution. Through awareness raising activities, educational campaigns and co-design workshops, Healthier Kosovo has been educating communities, providing them with the necessary information on climate change health threats and the measures to reduce their exposure to the threats.

Given the fact that the environment and health issues can be affected by the actions and decisions of individual, the Healthier Kosovo project has been engaging youth and all the community in addressing the challenges of air pollution. Through awareness raising activities, educational campaigns and co-design workshops, Healthier Kosovo has been educating communities, providing them with the necessary information on climate change health threats and the measures to reduce their exposure to the threats.

In the series of awareness raising activities, a blog post titled ‘Cities are growing dangerously warm: What we need to know and what has to be done’ was published as part of the Heat Wave Campaign aiming to educate communities about how heat waves are becoming more frequent because of climate change. 

We believe that this joint UN project will contribute to increased awareness of the environmental threats that affect people’s health and well-being - and provide ability and tools to take action to secure a clean and healthy environment for all.

Read or blog on Heatwave:

Cities are getting dangerously warm: What we need to know and what needs to be done | United Nations Development Programme (undp.org)

Story by Rina Abazi and Zana Shabani Isenaj