The UNEP Year Book 2011 shows that we have been experiencing an exceptional level of ecological extremes. However, scientists and policy makers have been making headway on addressing some of the most pressing environmental issues. The UNEP Year Book 2011 underlines some of the successes achieved when science is fully brought into service for sustainable development. Yet, it also spotlights that many of the international responses to the challenges remain at best a patchwork: at worst, often far behind the scale and pace of environmental change being witnessed today. The 2011 Year Book showcases and explains emerging issues among which the wider impacts of phosphorus use in food production, pointing to concerns over the future availability of phosphorus supplies —in contrast with the millions of tonnes
of fertilizer washed from the land into the seas triggering algal blooms and damage to fish stocks and tourism-based industries.