Ensuring environmental sustainability

The Millennium Development Goals framework only partially integrated environmental concerns, which have become more pressing over the past 20 years. Population growth, increasing standards of living and higher consumption of energy and natural resources have unquestionably contributed to substantial and fundamental changes in the earth’s environment. Evidence of global warming is now unequivocal. The concentration of greenhouse gases trapped in the earth’s atmosphere has increased, the atmosphere and the ocean have warmed, ice caps have receded and sea levels have risen. The irreversible loss of biodiversity provides some of the clearest evidence of a failure of global stewardship by the current generation.

Related Subject(s): Population and Demography