Human Development and The Environment. Challenges for the United Nations in the New Millennium

The United Nations Conference held in Tokyo on January 2000, entitled `On the Threshold of the New Millennium’ recognized a broad consensus that the future success of the United Nations systems will have to embrace new thinking and realistic reforms in the context of new and complex challenges. The Conference brought together policy makers, leading thinkers and academics to generate and discuss new insights and recommendations on the challenges faced by human development, and on the role of the United Nations in helping to address them. The Conference examined key issues related to development, environment conservation, peace, governance, and security at a global level, through presentations outlining policy implications and recommendations arising from them. The combined participation of governments, researchers and NGOs provided a bridge between the theoretical and the practical in the discussion of problems and solutions.

This edited collection looks at the problems, processes, and actors that constitute the milieu for both human development and the for environment in the new millennium. Chapters in the first section, focused on human development, highlight the widening economic and social divide following on globalization, and the social and political challenges related to growing poverty, The section also discusses, the globalisation of science and technology, and the potential impacts and implications for the UN system. Another topic is population growth and demographic change in low- and middle-income countries, and the impact for attempts to achieve sustainable development. Other chapters include lessons from international experience with development cooperation, focusing on the role of institutions in the management of the global economy, and the dynamics of the clash between institutional requirements and the needs and aspirations of the peoples, counties and communities in both North and the South.

Environmental change as a result of human activity has increased dramatically in the last decade. The chapters in this second section on environment deal with such issues and problems as climate change and the loss of bio-diversity. The authors present the effects of urbanisation and industrialisation in relation to sustainable development and point to the need for multi-stakeholder approaches to environmental policy formulation and implementation. The section also includes chapters focusing on water governance, and the world’s energy requirements for the next millennium. Land degradation and its relationship to food insecurity is another issue discussed here. . The final chapter brings the discussion to close by exploring holistic forms of environment governance, integrated with social and human development concerns.
It is concluded that, amongst existing global institutions, only the UN has the moral legitimacy, global credibility and practical reach to mediate and resolve the competing tensions associated with both the process and the outcomes of globalisation.