Global Environment Outlook 4

The fourth Global Environment Outlook – environment for development (GEO-4) places sustainable development at the core of the assessment, particularly on issues dealing with intra- and intergenerational equity. The analyses include the need and usefulness of valuation of environmental goods and services, and the role of such services in enhancing development and human well-being and minimizing human vulnerability to environmental change. The GEO-4 temporal baseline is 1987, the year in which the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) published its seminal report, Our Common Future. The Brundtland Commission was established in 1983, under UN General Assembly resolution 38/161 to look at critical environment and development challenges. It was established at a time of an unprecedented rise in pressures on the global environment, and when grave predictions about the human future were becoming commonplace. 

The year 2007 was a major milestone in marking what was achieved in the area of sustainable development and recording efforts – from local to global – to address various environmental challenges.