Publications

Nothing short of a technological revolution on the scale of the first industrial revolution will be required to meet the challenge of sustainable development. Enormous improvements in human welfare have taken place over the past two centuries, but at a lasting cost of degradation of our natural environment. Continuation along established economic growth paths means that the Earth's capacity to ensure human welfare and serve as a sink for the waste and pollution generated in the creation of that welfare will be exceeded.

The World Economic and Social Survey 2011 analyses the challenges and options involved in shifting to a "green economy" based on more efficient and renewable…

The world continues to make advances towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), despite the global economic downturn, but the rate of improvement remains too slow and countries must step up their efforts if the MDGs are to be achieved by their target date of 2015, a new United Nations report says. The annual assessment report, released today by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, shows that the world has made huge strides in reducing extreme poverty...

The United Nations Statistical Yearbook is an annual compilation of a wide range of international economic, social and environmental statistics for over 200 countries and areas of the world, compiled from sources including UN agencies and other international, national and specialized organizations. The fifty-second issue contains data available to the Statistics Division as of June 2008 and presents them in 68 tables on topics including: agriculture; balance of payments; communication; development assistance; education; energy; environment; finance and gender.

The central message of the World Economic and Social Survey 2009 is that addressing the climate challenge cannot be met through ad hoc and incremental actions. In the first place, it requires much stronger efforts by advanced countries to cut their emissions. The fact that in this regard more than a decade has been lost since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change only adds urgency to those efforts. However, even if advanced countries begin to match their words with deeds, their efforts are, by themselves, unlikely to be sufficient to meet the climate challenge. The active participation of developing countries is now required and…

The Millennium Development Goals report presents a yearly assessment of global progress towards achieving the MDGs. It is prepared by the Statistics Division at DESA on the basis of input provided by the members of the Inter-agency and Expert Group on MDG Indicators. Less than six years away from the 2015 deadline to achieve the MDGs, this report warns that despite many successes, overall progress has been...

This report presents an assessment of progress, based on data available as of June 2008 on all official Millennium Development Goals (MDG) indicators, including the new ones introduced. The aggregate figures in the report provide an overall assessment of regional progress under the eight goals and are a convenient way to track advances over time.