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sustainable development, providing that institutional arrangements permit sustainable policy options to be elaborated, considered, and implemented.
II. PROPOSALS FOR INSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL CHANGE
23. The ability to choose policy paths that are sustainable requires that the ecological dimensions of policy be considered at the same time as the economic, trade, energy. agricultural, industrial, and other dimensions – on the same agendas and in the same national and international institutions. That is the chief institutional challenge of the 1990s.
24. There are significant proposals for institutional and legal change in previous, chapters of our report. The Commission's proposals for institutional and legal change at the national, regional, and international levels are embodied in six priority areas:
- getting at the sources,
- dealing with the effects,
- assessing global risks,
- making informed choices.
- providing the legal means, and
- investing in our future.
Together, these priorities represent the main directions for institutional add legal change needed to make the transition to sustainable development. Concerted action is needed under all six.
1. Getting at the Sources
1.1 National Policies and Institutions
25. The way countries achieve sustainable development will vary among the many different political and economic systems around the world. Governments differ greatly in their capacity to monitor and evaluate sustainable development, and many will need assistance. Several features should be common to most countries.
26. Sustainable development objectives should be incorporated the terms of reference of those cabinet and legislative committees dealing with national economic policy and planning as well as those dealing with key sectoral and international policies. As an extension of this, the major central economic and sectoral agencies of governments should now be made directly responsible and fully accountable for ensuring that their policies, programmes, and budgets support development that is ecologically as well as economically sustainable.
27. Where resources and data permit, an annual report and an audit on changes in environmental quality and in the stock of the nation's environmental resource assets are needed to complement the traditional annual fiscal budget and economic development
