This book provides an overview of the most important issues as they are dealt with in the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development’s Plan of Implementation. It addresses the science behind the discussions on poverty, production and consumption patterns, water, energy, Small Island Developing States, sustainability issues in Central/Eastern Europe and Latin America, and the role of the financial world in the sustainable development of education, science and research.

This title was first published in 2000: This inside look at the G7/G8 summits is from an author who combines personal experience of the summit process with academic analysis. It weaves together a critical narrative of the annual summits with essays on their interaction with contemporary trends - interdependence, globalization and the end of the Cold War - and with key international institutions. the summits are judged against their original objectives: reconciling domestic and external pressures, mobilizing collective management and providing political leadership. Readers should take away an understanding of how the leaders of the major industrial democracies have responded to the transformation of the world economy during the late 20th century and how far they have succeeded in reforming the international economic system to meet the next millennium.