The World Wildlife Fund released its “Greenprint” agenda this week – a policy roadmap for the next administration to address global threats to environmental, social and political stability in four key areas: climate change, conservation of natural resources, food security and freshwater availability.

“In our conservation work around the world, WWF has long recognized the connection between political stability, regional security and natural resource use,” said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF. “These issues are now taking center stage in the form of climate change, energy independence, and national security.”

The WWF Greenprint has been provided to Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and their campaign staffs. It outlines specific policy initiatives that would reduce threats to global peace and security by cutting greenhouse gas emissions and establishing preparedness measures for dealing with the impacts of climate change, ensuring plentiful food and clean water for people around the world, and retooling the U.S. government’s Cold War-era foreign assistance program to ensure more sustainable use of the world’s natural resources.

The WWF Greenprint, which is available here, is divided into four parts: climate change, food security, freshwater availability and natural resource protection and management. On climate change, it recommends that the next administration play a constructive role in international negotiations on a new climate treaty, curb deforestation which accounts for nearly 20 percent of global annual greenhouse gas emissions, propose domestic legislation to establish a cap and trade program for greenhouse gases and develop a preparedness strategy for confronting the impacts of climate change.

On food security, it recommends the development of performance-based standards for biofuels to ensure fuel supplies don’t diminish food supplies, and it urges an overhaul of management policies to restore the health of the world’s declining fisheries – a primary source of protein for more than 1 billion of the world’s poor. Further, it states that freshwater availability should be a strategic priority for the U.S. and urges the next administration to lay the scientific and policy groundwork for global water security.

To ensure sustainable management of natural resources, the WWF Greenprint states that America’s Cold War-era foreign assistance programs should be restructured to better integrate conservation and sustainability into the framework. It further urges renewed investment in natural assets and a stronger engagement with China, which is rapidly developing at a rate that is stressing the world’s natural resource capacity.

“There is still time to manage our way out of this crisis, but the clock is ticking,” said Roberts. “We need to start now, for decisions deferred today will be far harder and costlier for our children to make tomorrow.”