ABSTRACT
This chapter overviews global environmental issues, and explores the scale of major challenges to sustainable development, to give some idea of their interactions and to set the stage for discussion about how we might improve environmental management. It outlines some major world trends and their consequences. Population growth can be accommodated easily in some ecosystems; many countries need industrialization to alleviate poverty; for many people an urban life-style is preferable to the limitations of rural life; almost everybody wishes to travel; and so on. The key issue for sustainable development is the magnitude of the changes induced by these trends. Relationships between such trends and their consequences are not merely distinctions on a continuum of 'good' to 'bad' environmental effects: they are the very stuff of debate over the nature of sustainable development and the future of the planet.
