Among twenty-one representatives of as many nations comprising the World Commission on Environment and Development, there was unanimous agreement on all issues concerning the environment, except two—the causal significance of population growth, and what to do with Antarctica. The lack of consensus on population is symptomatic of widespread confusion not only in the theoretical and empirical literature, but also among advocates of population control.

This paper argues that confusion stems from insufficient attention to the nature of the causes involved. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds—ultimate and proximate. Ultimate causes include polluting technologies, affluence-related wastes, environmental consequences of warfare, land and urban mismanagement policies, and so on. In contrast, proximate causes such as rapid population growth are shown to be more situation-specific, contemporary, and of a confounding nature.

The global community of humans faces a number of large-scale problems for the resolution of which worldwide cooperation will be required. These ‘global problems’ include continued militarization in many parts of the world, the growth of the human population and its concentration in poor regions and in urban environments, the financial crisis of developing countries, the twin processes of deforestation and desertification and related environmental imbalances that threaten shortfalls in the world's food supply, as well as coastal flooding and many other results of climatic disturbance. Given the existing arsenals of the world's nation-states, humanity is poised for species suicide–possibly even terricide–and, even if it manages to avoid this ultimate catastrophe, it still faces the prospect of a depleted and overpopulated Biosphere.

This paper first identifies the main trends which have operated in the countryside of Great Britain since 1950, assessing the costs and benefits of these to different countryside interest-groups. This section concludes that the British countryside since World War II has been more or less willingly sacrificed for material affluence.

The paper then relates this process to economic activity, and in particular to the linear-model of such activity which is posited as currently dominant, together with the principal objectives which it is used to promote. This situation is compared with a circular economic model with different objectives. The comparison yields the conclusion that such a model would yield significant improvements over the linear model in terms of countryside diversity, amenity, and sustainability. The paper then moves on to a consideration of resources, and contrasts the different values given to different resources depending on the economic model which is being employed.

The final conclusion of the paper is that while renewable resources — many of them located in or deriving from the countryside — would seem to have much economic potential, the extent to which that potential will be sustainably realized will depend on the extent to which the circular economic model, and the values and objectives underlying it, replace the linear model in economic decision-making.

Insect species etc. comprise about 80% of the specific and subspecific taxa of the animal kingdom, and their conservation is an important, integral, and contemporary, aspect of the conservation of biological diversity. The species richness of this vast group makes detailed studies of all components insurmountable relative to the urgency for diversity conservation solutions. Landscape ecology offers a way of conceptualizing the situation, and is a tool for management. This approach is explored in the present paper, using the extensive data available on decticine bush crickets in the Montpellier region of southern France. Corridors, patches, and matrices, are considered, with special reference to the bush crickets' distributions at the boundaries of these elements.

As well as movement across the boundaries and resident interpenetration of these elements by those insects the ecotones are also important ecological entities in their own right. Additionally, vertical, as well as horizontal, aspects of landscape elements are important for these small animals with small home-ranges.

Viewing Planet Earth from the standpoint of modern life as a whole, we recognize three main systems, namely The Biosphere, the sociosphere, and the technosphere, although some authorities prefer to consider the two lastmentioned as forming together a so-called ‘noosphere’ or sphere of human influence. Thus we have The Biosphere, constituting the sphere containing life so far up and down as any form of it exists naturally, the technosphere, constituting the Man-made system of structures set within the space of The Biosphere, and the sociosphere, which is commonly defined as the sphere of Man's influence, and is the Man-engendered system of non-structures (institutions, organizations, movements, etc.) that Man has developed in managing his Biospheral relationships and those with the other two systems.

This paper argues that the comparative lack of concern for Nature conservation in the ‘Western World’ has been a product of its economic development experience, the nature of its economic systems and economic organizations (both market and centrally controlled ‘state socialist’), and its centralized political systems as well as its Judaic-Christian value system. But some change in attitude has occurred in recent years, and there is now far more readiness than formerly to consider the economic and direct benefits to Man of conservation of living resources (see, for example, the World Conservation Strategy), and growing interest in the possible ethical rights of other sentient (and perhaps even non-sentient) beings. In general, however, economists remain unsympathetic to ecologists who do not subscribe to their economic value-systems.