The Earth is our home, and it’s the only home we’re likely to have for a long time to come. It's bountiful, but it's finite. Our greatest challenge in the twenty-first century will be to find ways to live sustainably so that our descendants can live well, and so that the Earth’s myriad other life forms can continue to evolve and thrive.

At present, human beings – especially the wealthy – are consuming far more than the planet can sustain. As a result, forests are disappearing, oceans are dying and rivers and aquifers are drying up. According to a recent World Bank report, almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure.

The greatest single threat is climate change, caused principally by the burning of fossil fuels. Changing weather patterns and worsening storms could disrupt agriculture, wreck infrastructure and cripple the world economy. In the words of Britain’s former environment minister Michael Meacher, spiralling global warming could ‘make our planet uninhabitable’.

New technologies such as wind power are part of the answer. But the real problem is our addiction to material consumption. We need to find ways to live richly that do not cost the Earth.

This section contains information and links on Population, Energy and climate, Agriculture, Forests, Oceans, Biodiversity, Pollution and waste, Sustainability and Animal welfare.