Changes in land-use can have an important effect on rates of erosion and denudation. In order to avoid accelerating erosion rates, decision makers in land-use planning require adequate information on the contemporary geomorphological processes and hydrology of areas where modifications in the land-use pattern are envisaged. The first phase in the acquisition of the information is the reconnaissance survey, which shows where and how the erosional status of an area is likely to be affected, and also acts as a foundation on which to base more detailed work in the future.

The Solitude area is an active erosional system, dominated by mass movement and fluvial processes. The rate of removal of material is likely to be increased by modifications in land-use which, from other points of view, would be considered entirely suitable for the area. Therefore, if accelerated denudation is to be avoided, projects involving land-use changes should be implemented only by those having an adequate understanding of the mechanism of geomorphological processes operating in the area.

The Author reports some information regarding three recent accidents in Italy: the sinking of a freighter transporting lead tetraethyl and tetramethyl, an explosion in a tower of a chemical plant which resulted in a considerable outflow of arsenic dioxide, and the Seveso explosion with the consequent contamination by highly poisonous Dioxin of a large inhabited area adjacent to the factory.

Difficulties due to lack of knowledge, conflicting opinions, and contradictory ‘remedies’, are reported and discussed. It is concluded that the local populace and authorities should be informed of the nature of cargoes that are being carried across sea basins or through smaller channels, of the types of wastes that are eliminated regularly into the air or water by a factory, and what a factory is producing during its various working processes that could cause risks to employees or others around—also, what possible measures could remove or alleviate these risks.

After stressing the importance of the plant kingdom to Man and the dangers threatening the survival of an estimated 20,000 species of flowering plants, this paper presents details of the activities of the IUCN Threatened Plants Committee (TPC), set up by the Survival Service Commission in 1974. The Secretariat of the TPC works through three main approaches: (1) regional groups of botanists and other experts identifying threats to their floras, advising the TPC, and preparing recommendations; (2) specialist groups doing similar work for plant groups such as palms and cycads; and (3) institutional support of botanic gardens and similar organizations maintaining collections of threatened species in cultivation. This last aspect was launched at a conference on conservation held at Kew in 1975.

The primary aim of the TPC is to gather and disseminate information on which species are threatened throughout the world. Accurate documentation is essential, and in this task both herbarium and field work are needed. Although our knowledge in general of temperate, subtropical, and islands, floras is reasonably good in most cases, and there are specialists working on most of such areas, our knowledge of continental tropical floras is much less comprehensive. There is an urgent need for check-lists to be rapidly compiled for such areas wherever possible. In tropical rain-forests, the difficulties encountered in listing threatened species are particularly acute.

Provided present collaboration continues and finance is provided, initial lists of rare and threatened species will become available within the next decade for many areas. This information should be of great value in preventing needless extinction through lack of planning or forethought, in providing a valuable input in the selection of sites for reserves, etc., and in complementing habitat conservation approaches—as well as helping to stimulate action on individual species.

The ‘Red Data’ categories used by IUCN to indicate the degrees of threat to individual species are outlined, and will be used in the three types of TPC publication—regional lists of rare and threatened species, bulletins on smaller areas with more detail on each species, and sheets for the Red Data Book which will give detailed case-histories of a limited selection of threatened species. All three approaches are under way; the European List has been completed, bulletins for many areas are on the way, and the TPC aims to start issuing new plant Red Data sheets in 1977–78.

Rapid achievement of energy independence has become an urgent national goal in the United States. However public opinion, reinforced by general environmental legislation and specific energy-related legislation, demands that the development of energy alternatives will not be at the expense of the environment. One area of strong concern regards landscape restoration.

This subject is highly controversial, and responsibility for research and regulation is currently scattered among a number of Federal and state agencies and bureaux. Examination at the programme level indicates that many groups are working in closely related scientific areas. The Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) is making a detailed project and task analysis to determine whether true duplication rather than complementation of effort exists. From this analysis and a subsequent interagency effort, an integrated and fully coordinated restoration research programme can be designed. The size of this programme will need to be commensurate with the size of the problem. Hence, reclamation activities must be geared to the great diversity of ecological systems that are present in the United States, with due consideration of the full array of alternative energy-development possibilities.

Clearly, energy development involves a process of trade-offs. Thus it is the responsibility of ERDA to ensure that energy options, proposed for the future, are accompanied by a complete assessment of environmental costs—so that energy-environmental tradeoff decisions can be made early in the development of the technology, and can be based on a solid foundation of ecological knowledge. In order to carry out this mandate we shall need to establish sites for longterm energy impact research (in every major ecosystem), help design a coherent national land-reclamation programme, support an adequate amount of basic and imaginative applied research, and develop public demonstration areas where citizens, industrialists, and professional specialists, can observe longterm results of energy-environmental effects.

Prompt action demands that we capitalize upon past studies and develop a programme to learn as rapidly as possible about basic reclamation processes, so as to provide the best available knowledge to society's decision-makers. Follow-on studies must be conducted to validate and improve our reclamation predictions and management activities. The Argonne National Laboratory, which will provide a central focus for the ERDA land-reclamation research, will gather and collate all pertinent data, so that models and generic statements regarding reclamation techniques can be developed to guide us.

In order to have an adequate supply of clean, safe, and environmentally accepted energy, we will need the full cooperation of all. Only by moving together can we ensure for posterity an environmental heritage as rich as that which we ourselves have enjoyed.

The changing fortunes of ecological issues in American society suggest the importance of citizen attention and attitudes to environmental problems. Only a few studies since Earth Day, 1970, have focused on a key group of political actors in natural resource politics—environmental activists. The great variety of issues that are of interest to environmentally-concerned individuals suggest that important differences exist among environmentalists regarding the nature of ecological problems.

The present paper examines the attitudes of these people and how they have defined the extent and character of the ecological crisis. By adopting an analytical framework that described levels of environmental understanding, this analysis has attempted to explore belief-structures within the environmental movement and the implications of these beliefs for future change. The evidence revealed that, while environmentalism is not a monolithic social movement, a substantial majority of the respondents to sets of questions about key issues were in the ‘reformist’ mode of environmental activity—that is, environmental problems are reasonably well understood by these activists, the origins of environmental problems are seen by them in terms of consumption and production activities in society, and these attitudes demand political action that is compatible with existing institutions.

Exclusion of human interference from national parks and nature reserves commonly results in undesirable successional changes in the vegetation. First of all the semi-natural plant communities, which have been formed and maintained by traditional methods of extensive land-use—mowing, grazing, burning, etc.—are affected. In Poland this has happened, for example, to the halophytic meadows on the Baltic coast, the secondary xerothermic (‘steppe’) grassland in the southern highlands, and the mesic hay-meadows of the forest zones in the Carpathian Mountains. When neither mown nor grazed, they all lose more and more of their typical components, and finally disappear. Many such communities originated hundreds or thousands of years ago and include a number of native plant species which cannot be found in any of the natural vegetation types.

The problems of conservation of semi-natural plant communities have been studied by the Author in three representative areas of Southern Poland: in the Gorce Mountains (Western Carpathians), the Niepolomice Forest, and the Ojców National Park near Cracow. In the Gorce Mountains about half the existing major plant communities belong to the semi-natural category and exhibit a much higher species-diversity than the natural forest vegetation (Table I). Similarly, in the northern part of the Niepolomice Forest, many more species are concentrated in the semi-natural, non-forest communities than in natural ones (Table II). For the Ojców area two maps, one of the actual vegetation and another of the expected or ‘potential natural’ vegetation, were compared and the topographic arrangement and successional trends of plant communities established (Table III). It became evident that, if all human impact were to be excluded from the Park, the rich semi-natural plant communities would completely disappear and many of their interesting components would become extinct at least locally.

These data, as well as similar observations reported by other authors, explicitly demonstrate that very often the existing vegetation diversity in national parks and nature reserves may be maintained only when the ecological situation has been rightly understood and the proper management adopted.

The environmental problems which may arise in India, due to population growth, increased industrial and agricultural activities, and depletion of natural resources in the next 25 years, are discussed here. Selected aspects of problems which require special attention are treated with particular emphasis on rural situations. The present status of the various aspects of human settlement—such as quality of air, water, sanitation, health, and housing—as well as aspects of conservation of forests, soils, and wildlife, is outlined as far as possible in a quantitative manner. It is visualized that environmental management will have to be more serious and of growing dimensions in the coming years.

It emerges from the study that two of the most serious problems which India may face in 25 years' time are water pollution and deforestation. By a.d. 2000, population in India is projected to reach around 950 millions, 65% of whom would be living in rural areas. The environment's capacity to absorb the concomitant wastes and pollution would be significantly reduced through the consequent growth of human activities. At present, in the rural areas, the percentage of population with piped water-supply and exclusive sanitation facilities is less than 10%. Unless drastic measures are taken, this percentage may not exceed 30% by A.D. 2000. Without appropriate sewerage and sanitation facilities, the accumulated wastes could mix with open-water resources, so leading to high levels of water pollution. The effects of mixing agricultural runoff containing wastes, pesticides, and fertilizers, in the rural water-sources, would also need consideration.

The current practice in the rural areas of obtaining more than 90% of domestic fuels from non-commercial sources—firewood, animal dung, and agricultural wastes—even if considerably reduced, may continue and lead to deforestation and hence to soil erosion, floods, climatic changes, and loss of precious varieties of flora and fauna. Such burning leads to air pollution as well.

Apart from the problems of water pollution and deforestation, the problems of the urban areas include increasing slums, inadequate transportation facilities, and industrial pollution—all of which would have to be dealt with. Finally, the present status of environmental legislation is reviewed, and certain policies and intense efforts for generating environmental awareness are recommended.

There are strong arguments for increasing the price which the consumer pays for the use of non-renewable resources. The fact that there are no exact means of determining appropriate prices should not deter society from moving nearer to this objective, particularly in cases where the price paid is likely to increase very steeply when easily-won resources become depleted.