by: Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)

From the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment to the major landmark of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, and now on the eve of the Rio+20 Conference, the United Nations has consistently called attention to the urgent need for global environmental action. It has also been a driving force in raising awareness that such environmental action cannot be isolated from social and economic development. We know now that all the countries of the world need sustainable development — an awareness that has progressed faster than the real
change towards this development path.

Moving in such a direction is more than a green transition: it is a sustainable and inclusive transformation which demands a
rethinking of economic, environmental and social policies and the way they relate to each other. This is why the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and the United Nations Development Programme, together with United Nations entities in the region, have joined their analytical and normative capacities to produce the present report.

The report is among the first attempts to take an integrated look at sustainable development in the pan-European region. It
argues that a new growth model in this region is both necessary and possible — one which increases human development, advances equality and reduces the ecological footprint.

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