A chance to secure our future.

• Author: Annan, Kofi
• Position: From the Secretary-General - Environmental quality of life

Imagine a world of relentless drought, storms and famine; of islands, deltas and coastal regions flooded by rising sea levels; a world where millions die of air and water pollution, while millions more flee in search of safer places to live, and yet others fight each other for scarce natural resources.

Alternatively, imagine a world of clean water and air; of green technologies, where homes, transport and industry are all energy-efficient; where everyone shares the benefits of development and industrialization, and of the earth's natural resources, yet those benefits can be sustained from one generation to the next.

The choice between those visions is ours to make.

One school of thought depicts all economic growth and development as leading inexorably to the apocalypse. Another downplays the real ecological problems we do face, or assures us that some spontaneous technological breakthrough will come to our rescue. Neither approach is helpful and neither is accurate. We human beings can thrive in the future, as we did in the past, by living in harmony with our natural environment. But at present we are failing to do so.

Over the past two centuries, remarkable gains in living standards encouraged some of us to believe that natural limits to human well-being had been conquered. But now the sheer number of human beings, the natural desire of all of them to share the prosperity so far enjoyed only by a few, and the unprecedented rates at which we are using energy and other resources have taken us into uncharted territory. We should no longer imagine either that one fifth of humanity can indefinitely enjoy prosperity, while much larger numbers live lives of deprivation and squalor, or that patterns of production and consumption which destroy the environment can bring us lasting prosperity.

The issue is not environment versus development, or ecology versus economy. It is how to integrate the two.

We thought we had found a way out of this predicament ten years ago, with the agreements reached at the Earth Summit in Rio. But progress since then has been slower than we hoped. Developed countries, especially, have not lived up to the promises they made--either to protect the environment or to help the developing world. Discussions on finance and the economy, from the local to the global, still treat the environment like an unwelcome guest.

Now we have another chance to get this right: the World Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in...