Population in the UN Environment Programme's Global Environment Outlook 2000

• Published in: Population and Development Review
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2000
• Subjects: Sociology and Political Science; Development; Demography; Klaus; Southern Ocean; Patagonian Toothfish
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2000.00634.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1728-4457.2000.00634.x; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2000.00634.x

Most specialized agencies in the United Nations system have taken to compiling a periodic status report on their field. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) issued the first in a proposed biennial series in 1998, titled Global Environment Outlook‐1 or GEO‐1 . The second in the series, Global Environment Outlook 2000 , was published in 1999. GEO‐2000 is described by the UNEP's Executive Director, Klaus Töpfer, in the foreword as “a comprehensive integrated assessment of the global environment at the turn of the millennium… [and] a forward‐looking document, providing a vision into the 21st century.” Its status, however, is rendered uncertain by the printed caution that “The contents of this volume do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of UNEP or contributory organizations.” GEO‐2000 paints a generally bleak picture of environmental trends. It evidences a wide array of particulars (“In the Southern Ocean, the Patagonian toothfish is being over‐fished and there is a large accidental mortality of seabirds caught up in fishing equipment”), but perhaps of more import are its statements about the root causes of environmental problems and what must be done. The excerpts below reflect some of these general views as they pertain to population. They are taken from the section entitled “Areas of danger and opportunity” in Chapter 1 of the report, and from the section “Tackling root causes” in Chapter 5. High resource consumption, fueled by affluent, Western lifestyles, is seen as a basic cause of environmental degradation. Cutting back this consumption will be required, freeing up resources for development elsewhere. Materialist values associated with urban living are part of the problem, given the concentration of future population growth in cities. And “genuine globalization” will entail free movement of people as well as capital and goods, thus optimizing “the population to environmental carrying capacity.” Some of these positions are at least questionable: the supposed “innate environmental sensitivity of ...