A seminar co-hosted by HNP and Social & Environment Thematic Groups
Every day there are reminders that plastics are everywhere, in the water, land and air, increasingly posing problems for both developing and developed countries. In December, a UN-sponsored conference failed to reach agreement on a global plastics treaty. Differences centered on the vast amounts of plastics produced, the waste that must be disposed of, where it goes, who should pay, what recycling by the private and/or public sector could reduce the problem etc. Ok Pannenborg and Richard Seifman, both frequent members of many U.S. and international health commissions, have been actively calling attention to an under-addressed aspect of this problem – the impact of micro- and nano-plastics (MNPs) on our health. This relates to the increasingly likely role of MNPs as a cause of many severe diseases of unknown origin -which include Alzheimer’s disease, pancreatic cancer, Parkinson’s disease, ADHD, brain tumors, chronic inflammatory bowel disease or other autoimmune diseases, reproductive health conditions and dramatically declining human fertility. They argue that the combination of these two phenomena may have much wider global policy effects and implications.
As background material for the seminar, please find attached two publications (Pannenborg and Seifman) which Ok and Dick recently wrote on the subject, one in the European Journal for Global, Public and One Health and one in the online weekly journal IMPAKTER.
Speakers:
- Ok Pannenborg, worked for the Bank in the HNP sector for over 25 years. He worked in Asia and Africa Operations, managing several HNP divisions and retired after directing the technical and professional aspects of the Africa HNP portfolio, as well as the Bank’s global HNP science & research engagements. Subsequently he served as a director at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) and was a member of the Lancet Pandemic Commission, the U.S. National Academy of Medicine Pandemic Commission and an Advisor to the Swedish and Dutch Pandemic commissions. He remains an advisor to the Lancet Global Governance for Health Commission (2024). Preceding his joining the Bank, Ok lived and worked in Bangladesh, Pakistan, DR Congo and Tanzania, and was the director of strategic policy at the Netherlands Ministry of Health. His current interests include the potentially devastating impact from micro- and nano-plastics on the health of mankind, especially the younger generations. He belongs to the earliest global health protagonists, including his 1970s first global health books and publications.
- Richard Seifman, a World Bank retiree was a senior U.S. Foreign Service Officer, based in Latin-America, the Middle-East and South-East Asia. Following his return as the US Executive Director for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome, Dick joined the Bank as a Nutrition Advisor. He was among the first initiators of the One Health approach, bringing together human, animal and environmental health concerns, prompting closer integration among the HNP, agricultural and environment sectors at the Bank. He is an Honorary Diplomate of the American Veterinary One Health Society (AVOHS) and a weekly columnist at IMPAKTER – the Business of Sustainability.
Discussants:
- Ede Ijjasz is the co-chair of the Social & Environment of 1818 Society. He has over 30 years of experience in international development — in consulting, and academia, in the areas of sustainable development, infrastructure, financing, and climate change. Ede worked for 23 years at the World Bank, in more than 90 developing and emerging economies in all regions of the world. He oversaw a portfolio of more than $80B of investments and close to 800 policy reports on-infrastructure, sustainable development, and climate change.
He is currently a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. He is a Senior Advisor to several international organizations and IFIs, including the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), the Global Center on Climate Adaptation (GCA) ADB, AIIB, UNESCO, and the World Bank, with a focus on climate change adaptation. Mr. Ijjasz has a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Hydrology and Water Resources. He is a lecturer on climate change adaptation at Georgetown University , and has lectured at Johns Hopkins University(DC), George Washington University (DC), Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the National University of Singapore. Mr. Ijjasz has published books on climate change, organizational effectiveness, and knowledge management. He has been featured in, and has been an expert source to, several global media outlets such as CNN, Wall St. Journal, Time, The Economist, LA Times, and CNBC.
- Stephen Geoffrey Dorey, is a senior health specialist whose work focuses on the interactions between health and the environment with a particular emphasis on the climate crisis. Stephen has been working with the World Bank for six years during which time he helped establish and coordinate the World Bank’s GlobalClimate-Health Program (GCHP). He currently leads the climate-health operations focus of this program. Stephen’s work prior to joining the Bank centered around the interface between public health systems and the environment, with the health impacts of climate change a central part of this. Stephen held several governmental and intergovernmental roles including with the UK government, WHO EURO, and the Commonwealth Secretariat prior to joining the World Bank. Stephen has a Bachelor in Medical Science from the University of St Andrew’s (BSc), a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Manchester (MBChB) and a Master of Science from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (MSc). Stephen is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health (FFPH) for the Royal College of Physicians (RCP).
Moderator: Tawhid Nawaz, Chair, HNP Thematic Group.
Registrations:
In-Person (MC 1-860 – 1818 Society conference room)
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