A new UN Environment Programme report,  21 Issues for the 21st Century, is gaining greatly increased profile because conservative organizations in the United States, including Fox News, have accused the report, which is only 47 pages long, of being a blueprint for global governance. GallonDaily has reviewed the report and can find nothing in it, except a description of 21 global environmental issues, which can possibly be interpreted in this way. In GallonDaily’s opinion the report’s main value is in helping to organize some of the key environmental issues facing the world today.

The 21 issues were compiled by a panel of 22 scientists with input from 428 scientists from around the world. The issues identified, and briefly described in the report, are, as ranked through scores given by more than 400 scientists worldwide:

• Aligning Governance to the Challenges of Global Sustainability
• Transforming Human Capabilities for the 21st Century: Meeting Global Environmental Challenges and Moving Towards a Green Economy
• New Challenges for Ensuring Food Safety and Food Security for 9 Billion People
• Broken Bridges: Reconnecting Science and Policy
• Social Tipping Points? Catalyzing Rapid and Transformative Changes in Human Behaviour towards the Environment
• New Insights on Water-Land Interactions: Shift in the Management Paradigm?
• Beyond Conservation: Integrating Biodiversity Across the Environmental and Economic Agendas
• New Challenges for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: Managing the Unintended Consequences
• Accelerating the Implementation of Environmentally-Friendly Renewable Energy Systems
• Greater Risk than Necessary? The Need for a New Approach for Minimizing Risks of Novel Technologies and Chemicals
• Boosting Urban Sustainability and Resilience
• The New Rush for Land: Responding to New National and International Pressures
• Potential Collapse of Oceanic Systems Requires Integrated Ocean Governance
• Changing the Face of Waste: Solving the Impending Scarcity of Strategic Minerals and Avoiding Electronic Waste
• Shortcutting the Degradation of Inland Waters in Developing Countries
• Acting on the Signal of Climate Change in the Changing Frequency of Extreme Events
• The Environmental Consequences of Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors
• New Concepts for Coping with Creeping Changes and Imminent Thresholds
• Coastal Ecosystems: Addressing Increasing Pressures with Adaptive Governance
• Coping with Migration Caused by New Aspects of Environmental Change
• Managing the Impacts of Glacier Retreat

The report can be found at http://www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/foresightreport/Portals/24175/pdfs/Foresight_Report-21_Issues_for_the_21st_Century.pdf