Consists of reports presented at the UNU conference "On the Threshold of the New Millennium" held in Tokyo on 19-21 January 2000.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Reflections on human development and the environment / Hans van Ginkel, Brendan barrett, Julius Court, and Jerry Velasquez -- Human development 2. Conceptual challenges of a globalizing economy / Karel van Wolferen -- 3. Into the twenty-first century : assessing social and political concerns / Rolph van der Hoeven -- 4. Policy priorities for human development / Ruth Kagia -- 5. Poverty and inequality in the era of liberalization and globalization / Giovanni Andrea Cornia -- 6. The future of technology and the implications for society and the UN system / Jerome Glenn and Theodore Gordon -- 7. Population - a global challenge for the twenty-first century / Wolfgang Lutz -- 8. Institutions, corruption, and development, and their ramifications for international cooperation / Beatrice Weder -- 9. Future of global economic governance / Walden Bello -- Environment 10. Urbanization, industrialization, and sustainable development / Fred Langeweg, Henk Hilderink, and Rob Maas -- 11. Water in our future / Motoyuki Suzuki -- 12. The importance of tropical atmospheric chemistry in global change research / Paul Crutzen -- 13. Energy requirements for the new millennium / Ingvar B. Fridleifsson -- 14. Global food security for tomorrow / Monkombu Sambasivam Swaminathan -- 15. Land degradation : a global and regional problem / Adel El-Beltagy -- 16. Global governance of biological diversity / A. Hamid Zakri -- 17. International environmental governance and its impact on social and human development / Akiko Domoto.