http://www.unep.org/geo/geo4/media/

The fourth Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4) assessment is a comprehensive and authoritative UN report on environment, development and human well-being, providing incisive analysis and information for decision making.

Released October 25th, 2007

Human Dimensions of Environmental Change
Chapter 7: Vulnerability of People and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities
Chapter 8: Interlinkages: Governance for Sustainability

SUMMARY:
"GEO-4 underlines the choices available to policy makers across the range of environmental, social, and economic challneges- both known and emerging. It underlines not only the enormous, trillion-dollar value of the Earth's ecoysystems and the goods-and-services they provdie, but also underscores the central role the environment has for development and human well-being."

"The difference between this GEO and the third report, which was released in 2002, is that claims and counter claims over climate change are in many ways over. The IPCC has put a full stop behind the science of whether human actions are impacting the atmosphere and clarified the likely impacts- impacts not in a far away future but within the lifetime of our generation."

From Achim Steiner Under-Secretary General and Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme