Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
policy community as clear and goal oriented and as allowing for negotiation.
accommodations were clearly sought with the concerns of other actors, but while
social and economic aspects of tobacco production and consumption were clearly
significant, it is clear that the primary driver of the process was the global health
impacts of tobacco use. Similarly, at the level of member states, the breadth of
measures considered during negotiations required substantial interdepartmental
collaboration. In both national and global arenas, the Fctc provided encouraging
instances of public health being able to attract support from traditional sources of
hostility. nonetheless, the Fctc remained a health initiative, and the engagement
of other policy communities was more partial than a partnership model might imply.
Assessing the FCTC
Any attempt to offer a definitive assessment of the FCTC is still premature,
whether with regard to its prospects for countering the tobacco pandemic or its
wider implications for health governance. It entered into force in February 2005
following its 40th ratification, and the conference of the Parties (the convention's
principal organisational form) met for the first time in Geneva in January 2006. Yet
it is already clear that in several respects the Fctc can be regarded as having been
enormously successful. the very fact that the WHO succeeded in its first attempt to
negotiate an international public health clearly is a marker of the Fctc's historic
significance in health governance and bears testimony to Brundtland's revitalisation
of what had seemed in danger of becoming a moribund organisation. although the
final text is clearly far from flawless, it received enthusiastic support from public
health professionals and advocacy groups and is undoubtedly a more impressive
document than appeared likely even during the later stages of negotiations. the
extensive participation of member states across the two working groups and six Inbs
has subsequently been mirrored by the remarkably rapid and widespread support for
the convention, among the fastest of any UN treaty, reaching 157 ratifications by
June 2008 (wHo 2008).
the primary value of the Fctc to date, however, resides less in the attributes
of the formal text and its ratification than in the more diffuse global impacts of the
process in providing an impetus to tobacco control efforts. the negotiations stimulated
rapid developments in civil society, for example, with the Fca now resembling an
emergent social movement for global tobacco control. the unprecedented scale
of multi-sectoral collaboration at national level, increased salience and improved
coordination across Un agencies, recognition of the potential contribution of tobacco
control to development, and the raised interest of donor agencies all contributed to
a profusion of local and national tobacco control initiatives. Such momentum is
reflected in the increased pace of policy transfer and 'leapfrogging' across regional
and global levels. within the european Union, comprehensive legislation for smoke-
free public places has been adopted by, among others, Sweden, Spain, Italy, France,
Denmark, romania, the netherlands, and Ireland, with Scotland inducing a domino
