Mr L.K. Jha, a member of an international commission which dealt with the question of ecology and environment, raised the question of whether we would leave our successors a parched planet with increasing deserts, impoverished landscapes and ailing environment. Mr Lester R. Brown in his thought-provoking book, The Global Economic Prospect, points out that the earth’s principal biological systems, i.e., fisheries, forests, grasslands, and croplands form the foundation of the global economic system.
In large areas of the world, human claims on these systems are reaching an unsustainable level, a point where their productivity is being impaired. Dr Myers warns against the depletion of forests as a result of which several species face extinction. James Speth, the President of the World Resources Institute, said that we are losing the forests at an acre-and-a-half to a second.