The seventeenth annual State of the World focuses, as ever, on the big questions. The core subject is the global environment, but this is systematically linked with other major global issues. Member of the Worldwatch Institute contribute chapters on subjects from the eerie decimation of the world's amphibians, to the control of international environmental crime, and the growth in natural disasters due to human actions.

Christopher Flavin's essay on the enduring division between rich North and