An examination of the relationship between human needs (above and beyond the basic physiological needs and concomitant consumption of resources) has re-emphasized the importance of control of human population in order to meet several other, also important, human needs. Development of human resources to their fullest potential requires utilization of additional resources beyond those necessary for the provision of basic physiological needs.

A preliminary model of resource requirements to meet human needs suggests that resource requirements for meeting the human needs for safety are considerable, those for meeting the cognitive and esteem needs are moderate, while those for meeting belongingness and love, aesthetic, and self-actualization, needs are minimal. Both industrialized and non-industrialized societies can adequately meet basic human needs, but industrialized societies may the better meet some of the higher human needs.

A statistical model was developed to assess the effects of interannual climatic variability on wheat yields in Sonora, Mexico, where the high-yielding variety (HYV) agricultural ‘package’ was first developed. The approach taken was necessary because of the lack of suitable ‘dynamic’ formulations. The climatic terms in the model—transformed monthly mean temperature and precipitation values—explain almost 37% of the variance in the yield time-series, after allowing for the simultaneously generated base and trend values. This figure is somewhat less than that in similar formulations for North American wheat, where the climatic and yield data may be more reliable.

The yields are most sensitive to preplanting moisture input, when the irrigation system is being recharged, and to March temperature, when fertilization can be reduced by heat. The yield response to these two variables was found to increase significantly as more HYV agriculture is adopted. Increases are over twofold for the precipitation term, and nearly threefold for the temperature variable.

A variety of arguments suggests that the results truly indicate an increased climatic sensitivity in the yieldresponse, although the formulation is incapable of discriminating between sensitivities that are purely ‘genetic’, and those associated with the cultural practices which the genetic change allows to be established. When impacts upon the consuming population are considered, the distinction between the two becomes somewhat less important.

There has been a systematic increase in the length of the freeze-free season in several Canadian cities since 1940. This increase is believed to be due mainly to urbanization. Although the rate of urbanization during the period 1940–70 was not significantly higher than the rates in the preceding decades, urban growth during those thirty years was accompanied by higher levels of fossil-fuel conversion, which produced higher temperatures in towns and cities than in surrounding rural areas, and a generally reinforced ‘greenhouse effect’. The higher temperatures in turn combined with other urban factors to enhance the length of the freeze-free season.

In a northern climate where the growing-season is already precariously short, a longer freeze-free season should have beneficial effects on agriculture and affect other aspects of the environment. There is general agreement among research workers that the energetics of solar variability are too small to affect tropospheric or stratospheric processes directly to any significant degree. This study reinforces belief in the importance of local factors; such influences tend to override any subtle connection between solar variability and the weather.

Interdisciplinary research has wide applicability to the environment and its management, and few areas can rival Brazilian Amazonia in terms of interdisciplinary challenges. Brazil's Ministry of Science and Technology currently makes interdisciplinary research an explicit priority, and to this end directs financing to large networks of researchers working in different institutions and fields. An impressive number of programmes support and carry out interdisciplinary research in the region, with varying success. Shifts in funding priorities are needed to maximize further advances.

Dearden et al . (1998) have suggested that my arguments for backing away from zealously pursuing the expansion of protected areas in Thailand (Vandergeest 1996) means giving benefits to local people with no consideration for the wider community or future generations. Let me begin my response by reminding readers of my central argument: that the driving force behind the rapid expansion of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in Thailand was primarily the forest department's need to find new ways of controlling territory and legitimizing budget allocations, rather than nature protection per se. This bureaucratic need was the outcome of widespread occupation of reserve forests, due to both reservation of occupied areas and new migration into demarcated reserved forests, as well as the 1989 ban on legal logging in Thailand. In its rush to convert reserve forest to protected area status, the forest department demarcated as national parks and wildlife sanctuaries many areas occupied and used by local people, producing a situation in which most protected areas in Thailand are surrounded or partially occupied by an alienated local population who feel that their legitimate property rights have been appropriated. The rapid expansion of protected areas in Thailand is thus hardly something that the international conservation community should be celebrating. Nor will ongoing problems with local people be fundamentally resolved through development projects, buffer zones, and participatory conservation alone, although these kinds of projects often have important benefits. I suggested that a more appropriate direction would be to degazette and allocate to households land clearly claimed and occupied by rural households, which I estimate to be about 20% of protected areas. I also suggested that some land gazetted as protected area could be managed as common property, and that conservation could be much more aggressively pursued outside of protected areas.

Across the Danish–German border in the Wadden Sea, a new dike was completed in 1981, enclosing formerly productive tidal flats and marsh areas which were most important as feeding grounds to breeding and migrant waterbirds. The bird populations responded immediately by a 50% or more reduction in numbers of resting birds and breeding pairs of most species. This paper reviews the management of the enclosed areas, comparing the differences in approach in the Danish and German areas involved.

Most importantly, a saline environment was re-established (a Saltwater Lagoon) in parts of the Danish area by actively pumping in water from the Wadden Sea. Despite sometimes drastic fluctuations in environmental conditions in the Lagoon, an infauna of species important in the birds' diet was maintained, and the Lagoon to some extent counteracted the negative effects of the dike construction.

The former marsh areas on the Danish side are drained and partly cultivated. In addition, the land areas are separated from the Lagoon by a dike, preventing a saline environment from being maintained outside the designated Saltwater Lagoon. Overall, the land areas in the Danish part are too dry and intensively used to be optimal to the breeding birds.

After construction of the dike, the breeding bird populations shifted more towards the German areas. Here, the land-use is much more beneficial to the breeding birds, because no cultivation has taken place, and a generally high water-level in the marsh areas is preserved. Furthermore, in Germany the new dike was placed closer to the original coastline than in Denmark, but a small area of the original foreland remained outside the dike, providing good breeding sites for colonial waterbirds.

It is concluded that, due to the creation of the Saltwater Lagoon, the Danish part of the area again sustains waterbirds in numbers of international importance. But an integrated approach to the Nature management of the enclosed areas — combining the solutions adopted for land management in the German part with the technical solution of re-establishing a saline environment behind the dike as in the Danish part — would have rendered a better compensation for the damage caused by the dike construction and related activities.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Galilee Mountains were still practically a ‘closed system’, as a result of which the balance of land-use was more or less preserved. Rural settlements had then hardly developed, and stagnation of the few remaining mountain towns was observed. In general, the roads were unpaved routes, the economy served for subsistence only (based mainly on agricultural terraces), while most of the area was of forest or rocky ground serving as pasture.

During the British Mandatory period, the Galilee Mountains area opened up slowly, and this process has increased ever since the establishment of the State of Israel. The Mountains are facing a tremendous increase in population as a result of natural local increase (mostly Arabs) and migration (mostly Jews). This excessive mountain population in Israel is an unusual phenomenon in comparison with other mountain regions in the western world, which have generally decreased in population though there, too, the equilibrium of land-use has been shaken—for instance in the Swiss Alps (Bugmann, 1980; Gallusser, 1980; Messerli et al., 1980), and in the Rocky Mountains of the United States (Kelly, 1980).

Cities are becoming increasingly important to biodiversity conservation, conservation that could also benefit urban people given the importance of nature to human well-being. Urban conservation is challenging, however, given cities’ primary role as human habitats and the need to simultaneously support heterogeneous human and wild species communities in similarly heterogeneous environments. We demonstrate a framework for identifying conservation zones within cities and human and species habitat preferences within them, thereby identifying habitat attributes that management could target to support human well-being and conservation objectives. The framework first categorizes conservation zones within a city, then develops species indicator communities for each zone. Habitat preferences are identified for each indicator community using richness modelling, and human habitat preferences within zones are identified using one of several approaches. Lastly, habitat preferences are compared to identify commonalities and differences within zones. We demonstrate our framework in Iowa City (IA, USA) using songbirds, identifying similarities in human and bird habitat preferences within conservation zones that management could target to support human well-being and species conservation and differences in preferences that could be proactively managed to reduce conflict. This framework can thus identify key habitat attributes and approaches to inform conservation planning targeted to specific settings within cities.