Photo shows satellite mosaic image of the whole of Europe. The colours approximate to natural tones.

Source: Worldsat Productions/NRSC/ Science Photo Library


This report is organised in six parts over a series of forty chapters. The main assessment of the state of the environment is presented in Part II (Chapters 4 to 11). Part III (Chapters 12 to 18) describes the pressures. Part IV (Chapters 19 to 26) provides an appraisal of the major human activities or socio-economic sectors which are the source of these pressures, and Part V (Chapters 27 to 38) presents twelve prominent European environmental problems. The main highlights and conclusions are summarised in Part VI (Chapters 39 and 40).

This first part of the report sets the context for the assessment. There are three aspects to this, each developed in succeeding chapters.

Reporting on the environment has become an important activity as environmental policies and programmes have developed. The transition to sustainable development requires among other things an adequate supply of reliable environmental information. State of environment reports can help in the assessment of alternative policy options, improve political accountability and meet the public right to know. The conclusions of theDobris Castle ministerial conference (June, 1991) saw these needs when they called for the preparation of this report. The conference concluded that the report should '... facilitate the development of an environmental programme for Europe' (Conclusion 32), be '... a basis for the effective implementation of environmental policies and strategies' (Conclusion 5) and act '... as a useful tool to inform the public and raise awareness about environmental problems' (Conclusion 5). The declaration to the Lucerne conference (April, 1993) endorsed the work going into preparing the report and stated that the report will '... serve as the basis for the further development of the Environmental Programme for Europe (EPE)'.

These conclusions formed the objectives and guidelines for producing this report. How these were interpreted and applied is the subject of Chapter 1. Here, an explanation is given as to how the report was developed, organised and presented to serve the aspirations expressed in the ministerial declarations and to supply decision makers and the public with a comprehensive knowledge base on the state of the environment in Europe.

Chapters 2 and 3 provide relevant details of the settings for this. Chapter 2 gives a summary of the current understanding of environmental change, how it relates to human development and responses at international level. Chapter 3 describes the specific characteristics and definitions of the geographical setting ­ the European continent.