The European Union is faced with major environmental problems related to nitrogen (N) compounds. The origins of three such problems, the atmospheric deposition of N compounds, the leaching of nitrates to ground-water and the anthropogenic N-input to the North Sea, are investigated by means of a Substance Flow Analysis (SFA); the reference year is 1988. Although the problems occur at various scales and have varying direct causes, food production and consumption together are the main responsible sectors, and the production and import of fertilizer appear to be the major ultimate sources in all three cases. Measures to combat these problems have been agreed to in various international frameworks: the European Community, the International North Sea Conference and the Rhine States Conference. These measures include technical emission reduction for acidifying compounds resulting in a 30% emission reduction; extension of the sewage treatment network and application of denitrification with 50% effectiveness; and introduction of measures directed at efficiency increase and emission reduction in agricultural practice in 10% of the agricultural area. The recent changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are not expected to lead to significant changes in N flows. Assuming full implementation, an almost sufficient 45% reduction is expected for the anthropogenic nitrogen input into the North Sea. The atmospheric deposition of nitrogen compounds will be reduced by approximately 20%. The leaching of nitrates to the ground-water is expected to remain at the current level or even to increase a little. In all, these measures are conducive to solving, but do not satisfactorily solve, the three problems, mainly because the ultimate origins of the problems are not sufficiently influenced and measures therefore inevitably result in a shifting of problems.

Plastics are the fastest-growing component of municipal solid waste in the USA, and over the past decade there has been increasing public demand for plastics recycling. However, the necessity to separate the various plastic resins to make their recycling possible, combined with the low cost of virgin resins, make this technically difficult and expensive.

Most sorting of plastic waste is done manually, and this method has been constrained to the diversion of only one or two types of plastics, because human sorters are incapable of distinguishing different plastics. A number of technologies are being developed in order to address this problem. Use of these technologies requires considerable capital investment and this makes many of them economically unfeasible at present. The federal, state, and local governments in the USA have continued to explore demand-side policy measures in an effort to promote market formation and operation. Where they have been successful, in the establishment of markets for recycled polyethylene terepthalate (PET), and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) resins, demand has outpaced supply, highlighting the need to find more effective methods to sort and divert different plastic resins. Even with these supply shortages, and with prices for virgin PET and HDPE at historic highs, however, most plastics recycling remains only marginally profitable. This demonstrates the need for continued policy support for the still-developing plastics recycling industry and recycled-plastics market.

An analysis of the factors driving the recycling of PET, HDPE and polypropylene indicates that, as long as manual sorting is used, it would make sense for supply- and demand-side policies to focus on the recycling of particular plastic products that are easy to recognize, rather than resins that are not. Appropriate policies can help make specific products easily recognizable sources of specific resins. Such policies, implemented in conjunction with measures designed to facilitate capital investments and promote the establishment and operation of markets for all resins, are necessary to increase significantly the recycling of plastic waste above present levels.

We review several studies and provide new data previously unpublished to show that there has been a substantial decline in pollution of German riverine waters since the beginning of German political reunification in 1989. This reduction is notable in the Elbe, which originates in eastern Germany and the Czech Republic. Pollutants such as many of the chlorinated hydrocarbons have fallen substantially in concentration, while others such as arsenic have declined only slightly. Total nitrogen has declined by only a small amount, but ammonium has fallen substantially, while nitrates have increased. Nitrification is no longer a significant drain on oxygen in the tidal stretch of the Elbe, but decomposition of algae from the middle Elbe is now a greater problem in the lower Elbe. The river-bed sediments of the middle Elbe have a higher species diversity. Fisheries are improving, and concentrations of pollutants in fish such as eel and bream have declined significantly. The river Werra has also improved in quality due to reduction in salt loadings from earlier potash mining.

The cultural norms or core values for sustainable development are an amalgamation of core social values and core environmental values. Widely-shared core social values became strikingly articulated following the Second World War via such instruments as the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1948 Human Rights Declaration. By contrast, widely-shared core environmental values did not surface until some two decades after the Second World War, being first clearly expressed in the 1972 Stockholm Declaration, to be followed by the 1982 World Charter for Nature and, more recently, by the 1992 Rio Declaration. I find that whereas the emerging core social values have until quite recently been essentially innocent of environmental concerns, the emerging core environmental values have been from the start generally couched in social terms.

Key ethical issues regarding the cultural norms underlying sustainable development include the questions of how to strike a proper balance between anthropocentric and ecocen-tric justifications; and a proper apportionment of the global biosphere between humankind and the other life on earth. Several lines of evidence suggest to me that the environmental and social strands of widely-shared core values for sustainable development are beginning to merge, and that there has begun to occur a slow but progressive development in mainstream thinking toward a recognition of an unbreakable link between social development and environmental conservation.

A number of major stumbling blocks to the achievement of sustainable development exist of course, amongst them the imbalance between human numbers plus needs and available natural resources, the prevalence of totalitarian and corrupt regimes, and the ineffective system of peaceful world governance. Despite obstacles to sustainable development, a trend towards a commitment to it seems evident in such components of society as governments, intergovernmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, academia, religious bodies, and grass-roots movements.

In order to determine whether mercury from distant goldmining affected health in the districts of lranduba and Barreirinha, Amazonas State, Brazil, mercury in the scalp hair of 101 peasants (39 males and 62 females) was determined by cold vapour atomic absorption. In both areas fish is the major source of dietary protein. The average hair mercury content was 38.6 ppm (1SD = 14.1) in Barreirinha, where the diet contains a high proportion of carnivorous fish, and 5.6 ppm (1SD = 3.1) in Iranduba, where the diet contains more herbivorous fish. The levels found in women's hair in Barreirinha are particularly critical in view of the evidence that peak maternal hair mercury levels above 70 ppm are associated with 30% of risk of neurological disorder in the offspring, and that 5% risk may be associated with a peak mercury level of 10–20 ppm in the maternal hair (WHO 1990).

The health of many people, and thus forest preservation, are threatened. An environmental monitoring and health programme is urgently needed for the Brazilian Amazon. Dietary assessment could be a useful indicator of the risk of mercury poisoning, if taken together with periodic analysis of mercury contents of commonly eaten fishes and of scalp hair, particularly that of young and pregnant women. Environmental monitoring is pointless if not directed at effective action; and a planning approach to this is suggested which includes a major educational component.

Wetlands in India supply crucial human and animal needs such as drinking water, protein production, fodder, water purification, wildlife habitat, and flood storage. Increased appreciation of uses and threats is essential to protect wetlands where justified. Three quarters of India's population is rural, it places great demands on India's wetlands and losses continue to occur. This paper is based on extensive discussions with natural resource managers, government employees, farmers, academicians, and resource users at dozens of sites in India, as well as an extensive literature search. Twelve important kinds of wetland loss are identified and mechanisms believed to be causing them discussed: (1) agricultural conversion, (2) direct deforestation, (3) hydrologie alteration, (4) inundation, (5) defoliation, (6) altered upper watersheds, (7) accumulative water demands, (8) water quality degradation, (9) wetland consolidation, (10) global climate change, (11) ground-water depletion, (12) exotic species and biodiversity. Wetland understanding, management, and Public awareness in India must continue growing if wetland resources are to remain functional.

International forest law remains an undeveloped area of law. It consists of a multitude of treaties and non-treaty instruments dealing in a rather unprincipled and uncoordinated manner with such issues as biodiversity in forests; protection of forests as sinks of carbon dioxide; protection of endangered tree species; and trade in timber. However, in the face of mounting pressure on the world's tropical and other forests, in recent years there have been attempts to clarify and articulate the values and objectives underlying international forest policy that may induce a further development of the law.

A tension exists between the firmly-rooted claims of sovereignty over forests and the emerging, increasingly-accepted legal principles which could guide international forest law: the principles of common concern, inter-generational equity and precaution. This shift has begun to influence the development of international forest law in critical international initiatives, including the Biodiversity Convention, the Climate Change Convention and, particularly, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests. The various layers of dialogue which have emerged to address different aspects of the forest issue (including legal, trade, and ecological issues) promote a gradual convergence of expectations and interests and thus ultimately may further normative development. Despite the diversity of forests and forest concerns between regions and continents, there is an important role for a set of general legal principles, objectives and procedures defining the parameters and establishing the ground rules of global forest law.

Approximately 780 million people world-wide are chronically undernourished, and past gains in food production have been associated with environmental problems, yet global demand for cereals is projected to increase by 56% and for meat by 74% between 1990 and 2020.

The International Food Policy Research Institute has developed the view that every person in the world can have access to sufficient food to sustain a healthy and productive life, that malnutrition can be abolished, and that food can originate from efficient, effective, and low-cost food systems that are compatible with sustainable use of natural resources. Moreover, IFPRI has concluded that these conditions can be achieved by the year 2020, if the world commits itself to specified changes in behaviour, priorities, and policies. In order for these changes to occur, sustained action is needed in six areas: (1) strengthening the capacity of developing-country governments; (2) investing more in poor people; (3) accelerating agricultural productivity; (4) assuring sound management of natural resources; (5) developing competitive markets; and (6) expanding and realigning international development assistance. We have the knowledge and the capacity to meet the food needs of every person without damaging the environment. What is needed is political will and commitment on the part of all members of society to take the required action.

Although forest removal has been well documented at a global level, knowledge of how major forest processes such as photosynthesis have been affected remains poor. Global forest change between 1986 and 1993 was assessed using the NOAA/AVHRR satellite data converted to terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP). Forest loss was a dominant feature in tropical regions, with the most severe destruction in Latin America followed by southeast Asia and Africa. Loss of high-productivity forests over wide areas was observed for countries such as Brazil and Bolivia. Further analysis showed that approximately 12% (9100999 km2) and 19% (2 600000 km2) of the low-NPP regions (<500 g m−2yr−1, e.g., deserts, tundra) and the high-NPP regions (> 2000 g m−2yr−1, e.g., tropical rain forests), respectively, were transformed to intermediate-NPP regions (500–1500 g m−2yr−1, e.g., savanna, grassland, or cultivated land), between 1986 and 1993. The extent of global forest degradation or fragmentation may be more severe than the deforestation itself. Low-latitude ecosystems were more prone to decline in NPP than mid- and high-latitude ecosystems. The NPP method offers insight into global forest change in a timely, practical and consistent manner.

Analyzing permanent plot data from 40 tropical forest sites, Phillips and Gentry (1994) found that there has been a significant tendency for tree turnover – as measured by tree mortality and recruitment – to increase since the 1950s. The dataset is now substantially improved, and includes 67 mature forest sites with turnover data representing most of the major tropical forest regions of the world. This paper presents an updated and expanded analysis of the latest data, and confirms that tree turnover has increased in mature tropical forest plots. Several artifactual explanations have been suggested but none are supported by the available data, suggesting that surviving mature tropical forests have been recently affected by large-scale anthropogenic or natural change. The effects of increased turnover may include impacts on future global atmosphere, climate, and biodiversity. Better understanding of the ecological changes in mature tropical forests depends on progress in two critical research areas – a ground-based monitoring network of long-term, fully identified tropical forest plots, and controlled manipulation of atmospheric conditions in forest experiments. Research activity in both areas needs to be substantially increased if we are to understand and predict the complex interactions between tropical forest ecology and global environmental change.

An historical overview of human intervention in the natural environment of Crete is presented by considering trends in human population size as well as land-use records since the Neolithic period. Trends in human impacts over the last forty years are interpreted from available statistical data on human population, forests, rangelands, livestock and cultivated areas from 20 villages of the Psilorites Mountain area, central Crete. Depopulation occurred, mainly from 1961 to 1971, with migration to urban centres of Crete and abroad; this affected traditional land-use in the uplands and transformed the rural landscape. An increase of rangelands then occurred at the expense of forests, and human activities in agricultural lands intensified, through such as tree cultivation and irrigation. Livestock grazing has become a dominant activity on all wildlands with a dramatic increase in animal numbers (70.4% in sheep and 50.8% in goats recorded in 1992 as compared with 1981), attributable to European Union subsidies. This overstocking, coupled with frequent pastoral wildfires and uncontrolled grazing, has resulted in rapid changes of land-use systems and landscapes on Psilorites that now endanger the natural environment and resources.

Pollution from many sources, over-fishing and the rapid development of Hong Kong have had powerful, adverse, impacts upon local marine life reducing it to but a shadow of what it once was. This paper describes Hong Kong's newly enacted Marine Parks Ordinance Chapter 37 1995, discusses the existing situation with regard to the designation of marine parks and reserves, and describes the special features of each one. It argues that a territory-wide strategy will have to be implemented if representative intertidal and coastal water communities are to survive. Coastal zone planning and management need to be among the Hong Kong Government's highest priorities because there are indications that the marine parks and reserves will not be successful. The threats to them are too great. Conservation legislation and coastal planning exercises should also be integrated with those of China as soon as possible, especially for areas of coastline surrounding Hong Kong. This is because development within southern China is proceeding at such a pace that Hong Kong's protected areas are now being threatened by external factors as well as internal ones.

Although bushmeat is known locally to be an important source of protein, large-scale patterns of demand are poorly defined. One area for which information is especially lacking is northern Cameroon, and this study therefore conducted a survey of 345 households in this region. Information sought from questionnaire interviews included the frequency of consumption, species preferences, and prices of bushmeat, together with people's perceptions of trends in the wildlife population involved. Bushmeat was estimated to represent c. 24% of the animal protein intake in the region and respondents generally preferred bushmeat to meat from domestic livestock. North African porcupine (Hystrix cristata) was the most preferred species, closely followed by guinea fowl (Numida meleagris), and Buffon's kob (Kobus kob). There was a tendency for the price of a kilogramme of bushmeat to decrease with the weight of the animal. A majority of the respondents said they perceived declines in some wild animal species within the last 10 years. For those who eat bushmeat one or more times a week, there was a tendency for villagers to eat more bushmeat than for people in towns. A number of measures should be taken, including wildlife farming and domestication and anti-poaching measures in national parks.

Integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) involve the establishment of parks and reserves with protective or buffer zones around them. Socio-buffering provides local residents with alternatives to traditional land-use activities, but the actual implementation of socio-buffering programmes is difficult.

Socio-economic requirements and constraints to socio-buffering were assessed for the Mantadia National Park in eastern Madagascar based on five criteria. Previously unused lands for compensating people for loss of access to areas within the park were found to be insufficient. While there existed institutions and programmes for developing substitute land-use activities, successful adoption of these activities was crucially dependent on their economic viability. Socio-buffering activities need to not only provide goods that are substitutes for goods that are traditionally consumed, but they also need to be at least as profitable as traditional economic efforts. Also, if land and labour are not a constraint to agricultural expansion, socio-buffering activities can themselves result in increased deforestation. Finally, the long-term effectiveness of socio-buffering was likely to be dependent on the satisfaction of a number of stake-holder interests, and on explicit linkages developed between socio-buffering activities and conservation.

There is very little information on effects of particulate pollution from cement factories in the Middle East and northeastern Africa. Variations of natural vegetation, germinable soil seed bank and species diversity were therefore investigated amongst four study sites situated at different distances from the Suez Cement Company factory, south of Suez, Egypt. The composition of plant life-forms was similar in both vegetation and seed-bank communities, with only site-dependent differences in their proportional values. For the standing vegetation, chamaephytes attained the highest relative density and cover, while hemicryptophytes and geophytes exhibited the lowest values. Germinable soil seed bank of all life-forms tended to increase with distance from the cement-dust pollution source. Vegetation, seed rain and seed banks of hemicryptophytes and geophytes were the most affected by cement-kiln dust accumulation in the area. The ratios of seed-bank/seed-rain in all life-forms were less than unity, with a narrow range of variation amongst sites and species. The germinable seed bank was more affected by cement-kiln dust accumulation than the seed rain in all species and life-forms. The species diversity of perennial plants was greater than that of annuals, with values increasing as distance increased from the cement-dust pollution source. Diversity in the standing vegetation Was higher than that of the germinable seed bank. Differences in the standing vegetation and seed-bank reserves were observed in the different study sites. According to their response to cement-dust accumulation, the plant species (listed in text) in the study area were separated into four major groups: (1) tolerant species; (2) non-tolerant species; (3) species having intermediate tolerance; and (4) indifferent species. Management considerations for the conservation of vegetation in cement quarrying sites and around cement factories were put forward to optimize recovery and restoration of vegetation in sites polluted by cement dust.

South Africa contains an extensive, well-managed protected area network which generates considerable economic benefits from tourism, but the extensive land and financial resources required by the parks and reserves are difficult to reconcile with the acute social and economic development needs of poor rural people with very limited access to any kind of resources. Local communities have incurred substantial costs from the establishment of these parks while receiving few benefits in return. National and provincial governments, as well as the conservation authorities, have now recognized that the long-term future of parks and reserves depends on taking effective steps to redress the local imbalance of benefits and costs. Integrated conservation-development projects (ICDPs) are beginning to test a range of specific measures to increase local community participation in the benefits from protected areas. Parks have considerable resources and expertise which they can use to support local development through ICDPs, although it would be unrealistic to expect parks to solve widespread rural poverty amongst their neighbours. Instead, park authorities should take the lead in forming partnerships to mobilize the combined resources and expertise of other national and provincial government agencies, NGOs and the private sector, as well as the local communities themselves. Community participation in wildlife tourism may best be achievable through joint ventures with the private sector or park management authorities.

Many high altitude regions of the world are still occupied by traditional communities of people, whose livelihood is closely related to a narrow base of locally available natural resources. A survey was conducted in 1991–94 of two villages inhabited by Bhotiya tribal people in Dharchula block of Uttar Pradesh, India. Medicinal herbs (14 abundant species, with Partitella ramitchadalis accounting for >50% by weight) constitute 12–13% of total income to the villages. The harvest is conducted by children during August to October, around summer settlements (up to 4100 m altitude) to which the villagers annually migrate. Fifteen cooperatives with a 1992 membership of 7009 herb collectors and salespeople exist in the Dharchula block, and marketing is through two specialist government agencies. Conservation measures, including protected areas and banning of direct trade with purchasing companies, have not generally been successful; pressure on the plant populations has increased and there is evidence for decline in the resource. Cultivation appears to represent a viable option for the resource, and thus for the income of the traditional peoples who still depend on it.

The accelerating decline of many of the world's forests represents one of the greatest problems and opportunities facing the global community. However little it may be recognized in its full scope, the forests crisis constitutes a profound and often irreversible degradation of both the biosphere and humanity's prospects. If this crisis is not contained and countered, extensive sectors of the world may well lose much, if not most, of their forest cover within the foreseeable future. I have drawn on my 30 years of field research in all three major forest biomes, together with my work with dozens of governments and agencies (FAO, the World Bank, etc.), backed by an in-depth review of the literature, to appraise the forests situation from both natural-science and social-science standpoints. My main finding is that deforestation is due partly to our scientific ignorance of forests' contributions to our welfare, both actually and potentially; partly to our meagre economic understanding of what is at stake; and partly to our lack of institutional capacity to manage forests for everybody's benefit, now and forever. I argue that forests are vital to the sustainable well-being of local communities, national economies and the biosphere. Yet they attract too little attention by governments dealing with the future of forests, also dealing with the future of a world that may eventually find itself with only a fraction as many forests as today.

I urge that we broaden our understanding of what it will take to save remaining forests. Primarily we should recognize that in the main this is no longer a forestry problem alone. While much can still be achieved through traditional forestry practices, also through more protected areas within forests and other ‘defensive’ measures, these activities often do no more than tackle symptoms of deeper problems. In tropical forests, for instance, we must address the source problem of shiftcd-cultivator encroachment. Anything less is akin to building a fence around tropical forests (which would take an awful lot of timber), a fence that would be speedily over-run by multitudes of land-hungry farmers.

There is growing recognition that forests make multiple contributions to the welfare of people throughout forest zones, of people throughout nations concerned, and of people throughout the world. Similarly the forests' survival depends on factors arising throughout the forests themselves, throughout nations concerned, and throughout the world. Fortunately this new recognition has been matched by growing awareness of the rapid decline of the Earth's forests.

Much of the policy programme proposed will be difficult. But it will not be so difficult as living in a world bereft of its forests.

Many factors influence the dynamics of fisheries and feedback mechanisms amongst these factors are poorly understood. The ecological systems are too large and complex to conduct controlled experiments and economic adjustments to changes in fish populations defy traditional equilibrium analysis. New modelling approaches are required to identify the driving forces behind the dynamics of exploited fish populations, assess likely consequences of alternative management measures, and achieve consensus among stakeholders.

We present an interdisciplinary modelling approach that can be used easily to assess dynamic consequences of alternative assumptions for certain key biological and economic parameters, and incorporates the input of various stakeholder groups in the fishery. Contributions of scientists, economists and managers to the model can be augmented with contributions from the fisherfolk.

Our approach is illustrated by a dynamic computer model capturing the interactions of three demersal fish species on Georges Bank, namely Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua), Haddock (Melanogramus aeglefimts) and Pollack (Pollachius virens), population sizes of which are assumed to be density-dependent for the purposes of the model and are significantly affected by management decisions. The model addresses how management measures for one species influence the population dynamics of other commercially exploited species. Various scenarios are run to explore the implications of viable management strategies under alternative assumptions on the driving forces behind complex ecological-economic processes. The analyses indicate that neither small reductions in effort nor mesh size increases are likely to prevent the further demise of the Georges Bank ground fisheries, and, in fact, stocks of the three targeted species may decline. Alternative management measures seem to be necessary to prevent collapse, and might include various strategies, such as effort controls and mesh size reductions, in conjunction with a dramatic change in fishing technology. The assessment and viability of alternative management measures in turn require that consensus is generated among stakeholders about data and models.

Conflicts between local people and managers of protected areas (PAs) have often undermined conservation goals in Asia. Since the 1970s, conservation planners have tried to address these problems by incorporating rural development into PA planning. More recently, many conservationists have argued for increasing community involvement in PA management, and for allowing traditional resource uses inside PAs. Based on research in Thailand I make three arguments regarding obstacles to implementing the new approach.

In Thailand, laws governing Wildlife Sanctuaries and National Parks enacted in the early 1960s were premised on the idea that human use and nature preservation were incompatible. Rapid expansion of these PAs in recent years has produced endemic conflict with rural people claiming resources inside PAs. To address this problem, the Thai Royal Forestry Department has cooperated with NGOs providing development assistance to rural people living in buffer zones outside of some PAs. I argue that this approach has met limited success because the main source of conflict is not poverty but claims on resources inside PAs.

The second argument is that the Forestry Department has resisted changes to laws making local use inside PAs illegal because these laws are important for consolidating the Department's control over territory and in justifying increasing budgetary allocations. In addition, by redefining itself as an organization devoted to strict defence of forests, the Department has obtained the support of many urban environmentalists. The third argument is that the community forest approach taken by a recent draft Community Forest Bill is an important first step in that it implicitly recognizes community property. At the same time, this approach will also fail to address key problems because it is based on a notion of the traditional village, and does not allow for the commercial nature of rural forest use or the household-based nature of forest tenure.

I suggest that the new expansion of PAs be halted, that land claimed by rural households be taken out of PAs, and that the government recognize community management rights in areas that remain classified as protected. More generally, the goals of conservation would be better achieved by replacing an approach based on the rapid expansion of PAs with one promoting conservation outside PAs.