State of the world, 1986 : a worldwatch Institute report on progress toward a sustainable 1986 / edited by Linda Starke

This is the third in an annual series of reports that measure worldwide progress in achieving sustainability -the extent to which our economic and social systems successfully adjust to changes in the underlying natural resource base.

Worldwatch Institute President Lester R. Brown says: "Economic deficits may dominate our headlines, but ecological deficits will dominate our future. Accounting systems signal when a country begins to run up a fiscal deficit, but they do not indicate when the sustainable yield threshold of a biological resource, such as a forest, has been crossed. Though similar in cause, economic and ecological deficits differ in their effect. The former do not immediately reduce an economy's inherent productivity. Ecological deficits, however, actually diminish the resource base on which the produc tivity of the economy depends".

Each new edition of State of the World covers different topics that bear on prospects for sustainability. The 1986 report focuses on the economic, social, and political consequences of ecological deterio ration; the need for strategies to enhance child survival and banish tobacco; innovations in the efficiency of water use and electricity genera tion; and new threats to national security that call for a reordering of priorities by leaders everywhere.