ABSTRACT
The international environmental crisis is more pervasive and, in some ways, more difficult to manage. This chapter examines the international environmental problems that impact all others-overpopulation, food production, and related desertification. The carrying capacity of an environment is only sustainable if a balance is achieved between renewable resources and the population dependent on them. Closely related to food and population problems are the food production problems caused by desertification. Desertification, the process of turning productive land into wasteland, is occurring at an alarming pace-particularly in countries in the less developed world. As discomforting as the long-term population and food problems the world faces may be, global pollution problems are no less severe. According to many scientists, humankind's impact on the composition of the atmosphere has seriously altered the greenhouse effect. Deforestation of rain forests largely for agricultural development is related to the greenhouse effect in several important respects.
