Publication: Ensuring Environmental Sustainability: Measuring Progress Toward the 7th Millennium Development Goal
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2005
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2021-08-31
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From forests, fisheries, and coral reefs, to agricultural land and mineral deposits, human societies depend for their survival upon healthy ecosystems and the sustainable use of these natural resources. This principle underpins the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that the international community is committed to achieving by 2015. Without a sustainable environmental policy, efforts to reduce poverty, hunger, and child mortality cannot be enduring. Achieving environmental sustainability presents major challenges. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005, and the Task Force on Environmental Sustainability (UN Millennium Project, 2005) showed recently that the problems of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss require urgent action. This report addresses this shortcoming and suggests two new tools for policymakers to measure environmental sustainability and two new targets to meet. It also calls for more research into better ways of valuing environmental services such as pollination, maintenance of soil nutrients, and water purification.
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“World Bank. 2005. Ensuring Environmental Sustainability: Measuring Progress Toward the 7th Millennium Development Goal. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36216 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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