The time is ripe to step up and expand current efforts to understand the great interlocking systems of air, water, and minerals, that nourish the Earth. This is essential for a reliable assessment of the opportunities for enhancing food production on land and sea. Moreover, without vigorous action towards that goal, nations will be seriously handicapped in trying to cope with proven and suspected threats to ecosystems, and to human health and welfare, resulting from alterations in the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and related materials.

The International Symposium on Science and Technology for Development, held in Singapore from 22–26 January 1979:

(1) Demonstrated that cooperative action could be taken by international nongovernmental organizations which are concerned about the role of science and technology in the UN Conference on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD);

(2) Caused a coalescing of these concerns in a commitment to bring the resources of science and technology to bear on Third-World problems;

(3) Resulted in a strengthened commitment to revitalize the patterns of cooperation of nongovernmental scientific and technical (S&T) organizations to expand their ties to intergovernmental agencies; and

(4) Led to an advised framework of action involving four groups, proposing: a) a network of institutions in developing countries to identify problems from the perspective of the developing countries themselves; b) a ‘switching mechanism’ in the nongovernmental sector to link the less developed countries (LDCs) with the resources of scientific and technological talent in industrialized nations; c) a multiplication of the collaboration of donor institutions; and d) a revitalization of the UN system for due application of S&T to development, accompanied by a more active working partnership with international nongovernmental organizations.

This paper deals with a Programme of Ecological Stations for Brazil that is being carried out by the Special Environmental Agency (SEMA), of the Ministry of the Interior, Brasilia. The main objective of the Programme, which is linked with the Second Plan for National Development of Brazil (National Council for the Development of Science and Technology), is to protect natural environments that are representative of the main natural ecosystems, and to provide the Ecological Stations with such a substructure as will permit Universities and research organizations to pursue ecological studies in connection with areas nearby that are inhabited by Man.

An ecodisaster is here characterized as ‘any major and widespread misfortune to, or seriously detrimental change operating through, Man's or Nature's habitat—whether or not it is engendered by Man himself, and whether or not it affects him directly’.

From this wide perspective but leaving aside such ‘old favourites’ as world famine and nuclear holocaust, and not yet dealing with population swarming and biotic invasion, are selected the following half-dozen items as being particularly pertinent: (1) Build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide; (2) Disappearance of more and more of the life-support system; (3) Water shortage and salt build-up with continuing irrigation; (4) Loss of genetic diversity; (5) Increasing complexity of human existence and health-hazards; and (6) The Beirut syndrome of human slaughter.

In Lake Baikal in southeastern Siberia during an evolution of some 25 million years, a unique, rich, and highly diverse, biocoenosis has developed, in which some three-quarters of the ca 2,400 plant and animal species are endemic. Conditions for its survival include stability of the chemical composition and water temperature of, particularly, the deeper parts of the Lake. Recently the large-scale development of wood-processing industries has had, as described in the present paper, an increasingly destructive influence on this biocoenosis. This destruction seems irreversible as the deeper parts of the Lake, which goes down to 1,620 metres, cannot be renewed.

Global shortages of raw materials and growing problems of solid-waste management have made resource recovery a pressing concern of public policy for many governments. The purpose of this paper is to review policy planning for resource recovery. Planning in this as well as related arenas appears to suffer from several interrelated difficulties. One difficulty of public-policy planning is the inaccurate modelling in policy analysis; another is the common resistance to uniform implementation guidelines. Both of these difficulties appear to hinge on the problem of behavioural change.

Few studies have been reported of the effects of power-plant discharges on tropical and semi-tropical marine environments where plants and animals in non-stressed conditions live close to their upper lethal thermal limits. This paper describes a multidisciplinary three-years' study made in Card Sound, Florida, before, during, and after, thermal effluents were released from a power-plant. Biomass, growth, and production, of Thalassia and macroalgae, were estimated. Animals were collected by trawl, drop-net, suction dredge, in artifical habitats, and on mesh-panels. Except in an area of 2–3 ha adjacent to the canal mouth, little damage to the benthic community was observed. This was very different from the effect of the first canal emanating from the same power-plant at Turkey Point, where a large area had been affected by heated effluents.

The possibility of persistent pollutants playing an adverse role in the reproductive success of Audouin's Gull in the western Mediterranean was examined through chemical analyses of 7 eggs of this species that did not hatch. Residues of organochlorine compounds and mercury were found.

The conclusion has been reached that a further increase of present levels of DDE may well lead to a decline of the reproductive success of the species in the western Mediterranean, especially in the northern part. These observations, although limited, could have implications for further species as is already indicated by other work cited.