click here to return to earthmodal home

Global Overview

As a result, several countries report marked progress in curbing environmental pollution and slowing the rate of resource degradation as well as reducing the intensity of resource use. The rate of environmental degradation in several developing countries has been slower than that experienced by industrial countries when they were at a similar stage of economic development. (See Figure 2.)"

Table 3. Environmental Regional Policy Responses

Key environmental issues by GEO region

• Rethink environmental institutions because they need to adapt to new roles and partnerships to fulfil present obligations and confront emerging environmental challenges.
• Strengthen the policy cycle so that it becomes more rigorous, systematic, integrated and able to develop policies that are better attuned to specific localities and situations.
• Provide an enhanced international policy framework to overcome the fragmentation and duplication inherent in the present system.
• Use trade more effectively for the benefit of sustainable development to capitalize on the new opportunities provided by trade liberalization.
• Harness technology for the environment and manage the associated risks to maximize the potential of new technologies to deliver substantial environmental and social gains.
• Adjust and coordinate policy instruments, including various legal frameworks, and measures such as valuing environmental goods and services, ensuring that markets work for sustainable development and promoting voluntary initiatives, to develop appropriate packages that work more effectively for the environment.
• Monitor policy performance with the aim of improving levels of implementation, enforcement and compliance.
• Re-define and share roles and responsibilities between local, regional and global levels to provide efficient solutions to managing complex and varied situations at a variety of scales."

• The Earth’s surface is warming. This is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. Other major impacts, include changes in water availability, land degradation, food security, and loss of biodiversity. The projected increase in frequency and intensity of heat waves, storms, floods and droughts would dramatically affect many millions of people including those in small island states and Polar regions. While in the past century the global average temperature increased by 0.74°C, the best estimate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for additional warming over the current century is projected to be from 1.8 to 4.0°C. Climate change may further exacerbate the loss of biodiversity and degradation of land, soil, forest, freshwater and oceans.
• More than 2 million people globally die prematurely every year due to outdoor and indoor air pollution. Although air pollution has decreased in some cities due to technological and policy measures, increasing emissions in other cities are intensifying the challenges. Indoor air pollution due to the improper burning of solid biomass fuels imposes an enormous health burden.
• The “hole” in the stratospheric ozone layer over the Antarctic – the layer that protects people from harmful ultraviolet radiation – is now the largest it has ever been. Due to decreased emissions of ozone depleting substances and assuming full Montreal Protocol compliance, the ozone layer is expected to recover, but not until between 2060 and 2075 as a result of long lag times.
• Unsustainable land use and climate change are driving land degradation, including soil erosion, nutrient depletion, water scarcity, salinity, desertification, and the disruption of biological cycles. Poor people suffer disproportionately from the effects of land degradation, especially in the drylands, which support some 2 billion people, 90 per cent of whom live in developing countries.
• The per capita availability of freshwater is declining globally, and contaminated water remains the greatest single environmental cause of human sickness and death. If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the people in the world could be subject to water stress. The decline of quantity and quality of surface and groundwater is impacting aquatic ecosystems and their services.
• Aquatic ecosystems continue to be heavily exploited, putting at risk sustainability of food supplies and biodiversity. Global marine and freshwater fish catches show large-scale declines, caused mostly by persistent overfishing.
• The great majority of well-studied species are declining in distribution, abundance or both. Although the decline in the area of temperate forest has been reversed, with an annual increase of 30 000 km2 between 1990 and 2005, deforestation in the tropics continued at an annual rate of 130 000 km2 during the same period. More than 16 000 species have been identified as threatened with extinction.

• Decision-makers can promote timely action by integrating prevention, mitigation and adaptation efforts into the core of decision-making through sustained efforts which include:
• Reducing people’s vulnerability to environmental and socio-economic changes by decentralization, strengthening resource rights of local people, improving access to financial and technical support, improving capacities to cope with natural disasters, and empowering women and vulnerable groups;
• Integrating environmental activities into the broader development framework, including by ascertaining the environmental impacts of proposed public spending, identifying sectoral and inter-sectoral environmental targets, promoting best practices, and monitoring longterm achievements;
• Enhancing treaty compliance by overcoming administrative costs and the heavy reporting burden of Parties, improving monitoring and compliance, and enhancing coordination, particularly at national level;
• Creating enabling environments for innovations and emerging solutions by using economic instruments, new and existing technologies, empowerment of stakeholders, and more adaptive approaches which break away from the traditional segmented institutional management and production systems, and result in more sustainable consumption and production patterns;
• Strengthening environmental knowledge, education and awareness by making the best-available scientific research and data accessible through improved monitoring, assessments and knowledge infrastructure, building on the rapid developments in information and communication technologies;
• Mobilizing financial resources to address environmental problems through innovative approaches, including payments for ecosystem services while achieving an open, nondiscriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system as well as meaningful trade liberalization benefiting countries at all stages of development.

• There is a need to address interlinkages among numerous environmental issues, such as air and water pollution, land degradation, climate change, and biodiversity loss. There is also a need to link environment with development issues, such as extreme poverty and hunger, implementation of the MDGs, and addressing human vulnerability and wellbeing.
• For a range of indicators, the rate of global environmental change slows or even reverses towards the middle of the century.
• Despite a possible slowing down of global environmental change, the peak rate and end point of change differs strongly among scenarios. The higher the rate of change, the greater the risk that thresholds in the Earth system will be exceeded in the coming decades, resulting in sudden, abrupt or accelerating changes, which could be irreversible.
• Investing in environmental and social sustainability does not impair economic development.
• Relying on the market alone is unlikely to achieve key environmental and human well-being goals.
• Greater integration of policies across levels, sectors and time, strengthening local rights, and building capacity help achieve most environmental and human well-being goals.
• Both trade-offs and synergies exist in the efforts to achieve key environmental and human well-being goals.
• The diversity and multiplicity of tradeoffs and opportunities for synergy increases complexity for decision-makers, requiring new and adaptive approaches.

In many parts of the world, women tend to be the poorest of the poor in a very literal sense. In addition to being the majority among the poor, they are often denied the most basic rights and access to critical resources such as land, inheritance or credit. Their labour and knowledge are undervalued. Their needs are often overlooked. They are more vulnerable to disease and disasters and the situation is made worse by their poverty. Cultural and social norms sometimes complicate matters further by placing additional expectations, restrictions and limitations on women. Gender gaps are widespread, and in no region of the world are women equal to men in legal, social and economic rights (World Bank 2003) (Figure 3).

UNEP Year Book 2008  (new window, 7.3 MB, pdf)
UNEP Year Book 2008 (new window, website)

An Overview of our Changing Environment
Quick glance at Table of Contents  (new window, html, this site)

Global overview
In 2007, climate change concerns gained global attention. The Fouth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change removed all reasonable doubt about the scope and dangers of the changing climate. Implications for
biodiversity are particularly troubling, as pressures from other human activities—such as deforestation, bottom trawling,
and biofuel production—threaten ecosystems.

Feature Focus – Putting the Pieces Together:
Using markets and finance to fight climate change

New developments are converging in unprecedented ways to respond to the climate crisis. The private sector is increasingly addressing environmental, social, and governance issues, encouraged by civil society pressures. National governments need to facilitate these responses by setting standards, supporting research, and providing incentives for the transition to an environmentally-sound, low-carbon economy, while preserving equity and helping the poorest.

Methane from the Arctic: Global warming wildcard

Warming Arctic temperatures could lead to the release of significant methane emissions from thawing permafrost and marine deposits. Sub-regional scale decreases in reflectivity result from loss of snow cover and advancing shrub and tree lines and lead to more warming, permafrost thaw, and methane release. Feedbacks from sub-regional processes produce more methane emissions that then feed into global scale warming trends. These new findings bring an added sense of urgency to advance climate and energy policy decisions.

UNEP Year Book 2009  (new window, 7.3 MB, pdf)
UNEP Year Book 2009 (new window, website)

New Science and Developments in Our Changing Environment

The UNEP Year Book 2009 presents work in progress on scientific understanding of global environmental change, as well as foresight about possible issues on the horizon. The aim is to raise awareness of the interlinkages among environmental issues that can accelerate the rates of change and threaten human wellbeing.

The UNEP Year Book 2009 examines in six chapters new science and developments, and discusses the cumulative effects expected from degradation of ecosystems, the release of substances harmful to those ecosystems and to human health, the consequences of our changing climate, the continued human and economic loss resulting from disasters and conflicts, and the overexploitation of resources. It calls for an intensified sense of urgency for responsible governance in the face of approaching critical thresholds and tipping points.

UNEP Year Book 2010  (new window, 9.7 MB, pdf)
UNEP Year Book 2010 (new window, website)

Year Book 2009 and 2010 are very similar and cover the same topics.

New Science and Developments in Our Changing Environment
The UNEP Year Book 2010 reports on new environmental science and recent developments in our changing environment. It looks at progress in environmental governance; the effects of continuing degradation and loss of the world’s ecosystems; impacts of climate change; how harmful substances and hazardous waste affect human health and the environment; environmentally related disasters and conflicts; and unsustainable use of resources. The chapters correspond to UNEP’s six thematic priorities.

The 2010 report extends the work started in 2009 as can be seen from the Table of Contents comparison between the two as seen here: