UNEP's Global Environment Outlook 2000 presents a comprehensive integrated assessment of the global environment at the turn of the millennium. Two over-riding trends characterize the beginning of the third millennium. First, the global human ecosystem is threatened by grave imbalances in productivity and in the distribution of goods and services. A significant proportion of humanity still lives in dire poverty, and projected trends are for an increasing divergence between those that benefit from economic and technological development, and those that do not. This unsustainable progression of extremes of wealth and poverty threatens the stability of the whole human system, and with it the global environment. Secondly, the world is undergoing accelerating change, with internationally-coordinated environmental stewardship lagging behind economic and social development. Environmental gains from new technology and policies are being overtaken by the pace and scale of population growth and economic development. While each part of the Earth's surface is endowed with its own combination of environmental attributes, each area must also contend with a unique, but interlinked, set of current and emerging problems. GEO-2000 provides an overview of this range of issues.