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UNU Update | |
The newsletter of United Nations
University and its network of research and training centres and programmes |
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Issue 12: October - November 2001 |
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New book
ranks relative
threat from environmental problems In Global Environmental Risk, a new book from UN University Press, researchers rank the relative threat posed by a host of environmental problems in different countries in an effort to help policy makers develop priorities for action to protect the planet. Criteria
included the human health consequences, the pervasiveness of those
consequences, the potential disruption caused and human manageability of
the problem. The resulting
matrix provided a ranking of environmental
problems facing four countries chosen for study: the United States, India,
Kenya
and The Netherlands. Using data from 1988 to 1991, climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion were deemed the foremost threat to the U.S. in terms of total future consequences, followed by degradation of the oceans and freshwaters. Vicki
Norberg-Bohm, a Harvard University researcher and project director, says
the effort takes an innovative approach to creating a transparent ranking
system that looks at all environmental hazards and at all potential
effects, one that can be used by many decision-makers to add their own
values. The study cites a pressing need
for systematic understanding of how the severity and nature of
environmental problems vary around the world. “An
increasing number of environmental problems compete for places on
political agendas, for the attention of regulatory agencies and
international governmental bodies, and for the limited resources available
for environmental management. . .This need can only become more pressing
as bilateral and international negotiations increasingly take on
environmental dimensions. “Resource
allocation sporadically tracks successive ‘problems of the month,’
responding more to media attention and political grandstanding than to any
more fundamental criteria.” In their introduction, the book’s editors Jeanne and Roger Kasperson warn that the short and long-term consequences of continuing degradation of soils, groundwater and the air may be worse than such current global concerns as climate change, ozone depletion and biodiversity loss. Response
to looming environmental threats will require improving human
understanding of the processes of change, recognizing and learning from history, criticizing and
restructuring the economic and political order, new institutions, and a
wider, more enduring sense of environmental citizenship and reciprocity
with nature. |
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Copyright © 2001 United Nations University. All rights reserved. |