Our country,the planet

The 1992 United Nations 'Earth Summit' in Rio de Janeiro may be humankind's best opportunity to save the planet. Only radical concerted action, by governments and people, can effectively address the range of environmental and economic problems, global in their implications, now confronting us. Our Country, the Planet, written to crystallise the issues central to the conference, assesses the gravity of our crisis and considers the remaining choices.

Sir Sonny Ramphal, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, now President of the World

Conservation Union, has a unique international viewpoint combined with sensitivity to the perspectives of developing nations. He argues that the planet's problems are not the exclusive responsibility of any one group, the first world or the third, the east or the west. The industrial countries use subsidies and protectionism to defend their markets. whilst overconsuming energy and resources. Poor countries are forced to overexploit their land and forests and degrade their environment, while population pressure, driven by poverty, increases the danger of irreversible ecological damage.

But linking the overconsumption, damage to the environment and disparity of resources are factors which defy regionalism or nationality-climate, the earth's capacity to sustain life, biodiversity. The solution to our dilemma can only come if we similarly transcend man-made boundaries and take a global view, treating the planet as our larger country.

Sir Sonny Ramphal's lucid account of the damage we have done to the earth and his recommendations for perhaps our last opportunity to correct it make compelling reading Overwhelming though the problems seem, his cogent, graphically argued book offers a positive approach to tackling the most serious problem on earth Rio and beyond ac the Earth Summit in Rio and beyond.