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This book addresses the question: "If the development of the quarter of the world's people who are now rich has brought us all so close to the limits of sustainable living on Earth, how is the development of the three-quarters who are poor to be accommodated?" For Ramphal, president of the World Conservation Union and a native of Guyana, that challenge is more than academic - it is…

For concerned scientists frustrated by more than a decade of “business as usual” national economic and energy policy in the face of growing environmental consequences, Al Gore's book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, can be viewed as a source for optimism. Twenty‐five years of world travel and studies of the Earth's ecological problems led Gore to publish his…

The mangrove, seagrass and coral reef ecosystems are of paramount ecological importance but have already undergone great degradation, which is advancing at an alarming rate. If present trends continue, the natural resource basis of the economy and ecology of tropical coastal regions will soon be ruined. This was the unanimous conclusion of the 110 scientists from 23 countries who gathered in…

This report on alternative livelihood systems for marginal lands was prepared in response to Preparatory Committee for UNCED decision 1/15, on "Soil loss and desertification and drought" of August 1990. The decision inter alia called for "an analysis of alternative sustainable systems of production of marginal lands. The majority of the people living in dryland areas derive their…

This book was first started in 1940, and it was finally published in 1984. In ways this collection of essays resembles the "Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius. There is a certain "summing up" of his experiences, and the spectrum of topics covered is broad, from strictly scientific treatises on, for example, the geology and paleontology of the Adrar region of Mauritania, to exploration of the Libyan…

Environmental degradation and the depletion of resources threaten Africa's biological systems as well as human health and the quality of human life. Unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, particularly in the industrialized countries which do not reflect adequate concern for environmental conservation and rehabilitation are also at the root of the numerous environmental problems,…