Every two years, the UNEP Foresight Process produces what is says is a "careful and authoritative ranking" of the most important emerging issues related to the global environment, in order to inform the UN and wider international community, as well as to provide input to its own work programme and those of other UN agencies. This is in accordance with its mandate of “keeping the global environment under review and bringing emerging issues to the attention of governments and the international community for action”.
As UNEP notes,
The concept of ‘emerging issues’ is subjective. It is used in this report to describe issues that are recognized as very important by the scientific community, but are not yet receiving adequate attention from the policy community. Definitions of ‘very important’ and ‘adequate’ are left open to those identifying the issues. Emerging issues are further defined as those that are:
– Critical to the global environment. The issue can be either positive or negative but must be environmental in nature, or environmentally-related.
– Given priority over the next one to three years in the work programme of UNEP and, or, other UN institutions and, or, other international institutions concerned with the global environment.
– Have a large spatial scale. Issues should either be global, continental or ‘universal’ in nature (by ‘universal’ we mean an issue occurring in many places around the world).
– Recognised as ‘emerging’ based on newness, which can be the result of: new scientific knowledge; new scales or accelerated rates of impact; heightened level of awareness; and, or, new ways to respond to the issue.
The output of the Foresight Process is a ranked list of 21 emerging issues described in a way that reflects their linkages to the various dimensions of sustainable development. The issues relate to the major themes of the global environment, as well as important cross-cutting issues.
These are the 21 issues arranged by the UNEP headings (with rankings of significance identified):
Cross-cutting Issues
001: Aligning Governance to the Challenges of Global Sustainability (Ranked #1).
002: Transforming Human Capabilities for the 21st Century: Meeting Global Environmental Challenges and MovingTowards a Green Economy (Ranked #2).
003: Broken Bridges: Reconnecting Science and Policy (Ranked #4).
004: Social Tipping Points? Catalyzing Rapid and Transformative Changes in Human Behaviour towards the Environment (Ranked #5).
005: New Concepts for Coping with Creeping Changes and Imminent Thresholds (Ranked #18).
006: Coping with Migration Caused by New Aspects of Environmental Change (Ranked #20).
Food, Biodiversity and Land Issues
007: New Challenges for Ensuring Food Safety and Food Security for 9 Billion People (Ranked #3).
008: Beyond Conservation: Integrating Biodiversity across the Environmental and Economic Agendas (Ranked #7=).
009: Boosting Urban Sustainability and Resilience (Ranked #11).
010: The New Rush for Land: Responding to New National and International Pressures (Ranked #12).
Freshwaters and Marine Issues
011: New Insights on Water-Land Interactions: Shift in the Management Paradigm (Ranked #6).
012: Shortcutting the Degradation of Inland Waters in Developing Countries (Ranked #15).
013: Potential Collapse of Oceanic Systems Requires Integrated Ocean Governance (Ranked #13).
014: Coastal Ecosystems: Addressing Increasing Pressures with Adaptive Governance (Ranked #19).
Climate Change Issues
015: New Challenges for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: Managing the Unintended Consequences (Ranked #7=).
016: Acting on the Signal of Climate Change in the Changing Frequency of Extreme Events (Ranked #16).
017: Managing the Impacts of Glacier Retreat (Ranked #21).
Energy, Technology, and Waste Issues
018: Accelerating the Implementation of Environmentally-friendly Renewable Energy Systems (Ranked #7=).
019: Greater Risk than Necessary? The Need for a New Approach for Minimizing Risks of Novel Technologies and Chemicals (Ranked #10).
020: Changing the Face of Waste: Solving the Impending Scarcity of Strategic Minerals and Avoiding Electronic Waste (Ranked #14).
021: The Environmental Consequences of Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors (Ranked #17).
How striking that 4 of the 6 the cross-cutting issues are ranked in the top 5 overall, and good news for social scientists everywhere that governance, human capability, the green economy, etc, feature so prominently. We are needed, after all. And comparing all this with KPMG's recent listing of megaforces, might be a good seminar stimulus.
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