Establishing environment linkages

To respond effectively to global environmental problems and, in turn, meet human needs more effectively, global environmental issues must be addressed in a holistic, integrated manner, building on the same technologies and policy instruments that are currently used to contend with these issues in a sectoral manner.

Conduct more research on the socio-economic causes of environmental deterioration and the interlinkages within and among environmental and sustainability issues in order to define the priority issues and suggest ways of addressing them.

New institutional partnerships involving governments, the private sector, academia, NGOs and civil society are needed at the global, regional and national levels. Taking into account that most changes to the global environment cannot be reversed quickly, and despite scientific uncertainties, decision makers need to adopt wise, cost-effective and adaptive management approaches that can be implemented now.

A set of physical, chemical and biological processes link global environmental problems so that changes in one have repercussions for others. Therefore actions taken to meet human needs have local, regional and global consequences.

The same driving forces - population size, consumption levels and choice of technologies - underlie all global environmental problems. All people affect the environment, and vice versa, but the rich have a disproportionately higher impact and the poor tend to be most vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation.

UNEP, the World Bank and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States have collaborated to identify the key scientific and policy linkages amongst environmental issues (climate change, loss of biodiversity, fresh and marine water degradation and others) and linkages between these issues and meeting basic human needs for adequate food, clean water, energy and a healthy environment. The interlinkages assessment report (UNEP, World Bank and NASA 1998) shows that there are several facets to these linkages.