A/42/427
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and legal change. These cannot be adequately summarized here. However. the Commission's main proposals are embodied in six
priority areas.
4.1 Getting at the Source
90. Governments must begin now to make the key national, economic, and sectoral agencies directly responsible accountable for ensuring that their policies, programmes, and budgets support development that is economically and ecologically sustainable,
91. By the same token, the various regional organizations need to do more to integrate environment fully in their goals and activities. New regional arrangements will especially be needed among developing countries to deal with transboundary environmental issues.
92. All major international bodies and agencies should ensure that their programmes encourage and support sustainable development. and they should greatly improve their coordination and cooperation. The Secretary-General of the United Nations Organization should provide a high-level centre of leadership for the UN system to asses, advise, assist, and report on progress made towards this goal.
4.2 Dealing with the effects.
93. Government, should also reinforce the roles and of environmental protection an resource management agencies. This is needed in many industrialized countries, but most urgently in developing countries. which will need assistance in strengthening their institutions. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) should be strengthened as the principal source on environmental data, assessment, and reporting and as principal advocate and agent for change and international cooperation on critical environment and natural resource protection issues.
4.3 Assessing Global Risks
94. The capacity to identify, assess, and report n risk of irreversible damage to natural systems and threats to the survival, security, and well being of the world community must be rapidly reinforced and extended. Governments. individually and collectively, have the principal responsibility to do this. UNEP's Earthwatch programme should be the centre of leadership in the UN system on risk assessment
95. However, given the politically sensitive nature of many of the cost critical risk, there is also a need for an independent but complementary capacity to assess and report on critical global risks. A new international programme for cooperation among largely non-governmental organizations. scientific bodies, and industry groups should therefore be established for this purpose.
