Per capita energy consumption in developing countries is less than one-fifth of that in the industrialized world. Extending reliable energy to the world's poor is crucial to encouraging economic progress and improving social welfare in developing countries. In light of rising global greenhouse gas emissions, achieving energy goals in a way that is environmentally sustainable is also essential. An innovative solar energy program underway in Bangladesh provides a promising example of a renewable energy solution.

Each year, natural and manmade disasters affect millions of people worldwide, causing countless injuries and deaths and costing billions of dollars. During the past month alone, severe drought and flooding have impacted nearly 7.5 million people in Bolivia, Indonesia, Madagascar, Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. In Bangladesh, nearly 100,000 are coping with a deadly wave of extreme cold weather that has already killed 130 people. Three years ago, a summer heat wave claimed over 52,000 lives in Europe.

The ecological and economic values of forests are enormous--they support up to 90 percent of known terrestrial species, store 283 gigatonnes of carbon, and provide a livelihood for over one billion people worldwide. In the past decade alone, roughly 130 million hectares of forest has been lost, an area larger than the combined size of France and Spain. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has recently pledged to plant one billion trees during 2007 with the cooperation of communities, business and industry, civil society organizations, and governments. Although the Plant for the Planet: Billion Trees Campaign is not enough to offset current rates of deforestation, it reflects a practical and symbolic step towards protecting and restoring global forests.

An estimated 2.3 million children under the age of 15 are currently infected with HIV and over 15 million have been orphaned due to the loss of one or both parents from AIDS. In October of 2005, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) launched the "Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS" campaign in an effort to improve the health, education, and overall welfare of the millions of children who have been impacted by the disease. One year later, UNICEF reports noteworthy progress but also insists that current efforts remain tragically insufficient.

Leaders from 16 Asian nations have signed the Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security, which promises to reduce the region's dependence on fossil fuels and promote alternative energy sources. Asian countries account for nearly one-third of global energy consumption, a proportion that will likely increase as rapid economic and population growth continue in the region. Greenhouse gas emissions from Asia are also on the rise--the International Energy Association recently predicted that China will surpass the United States as the world's largest emitter before 2010.

Nearly one-third of people in Sub-Saharan Africa suffer from chronic hunger--the highest proportion found in any region in the world. Fighting African hunger is largely dependent upon the success of the agricultural sector, especially among the small-scale farmers that comprise a vast majority of Africa's rural poor. Although the "green revolution" of the mid-twentieth century introduced technologies that doubled and tripled crop yields all over the world, African farmers did not experience similar gains. A recent article in Science, GM Technology Develops in the Developing World, discusses the potential for genetically modified (GM) crops to bring belated success to Africa's agricultural sector.

In 2006, a multiyear study of global fisheries concluded that the world's fisheries are at high risk of collapse by 2048 if current trends continue. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, over 70 percent of fisheries are either fully exploited or depleted. A great deal of attention has been paid to the human consequences of declining fish stocks--over 200 million people worldwide depend on fishing for their livelihoods and food security. A recent article in Science focuses on the ecological impacts of overfishing, including current threats to the Magellanic penguin of Argentina.

Arctic perennial sea ice is disappearing at a rate of nearly nine percent per decade as a result of global warming. If this trend continues, summer ice could be completely melted as early as 2040, meaning that arctic ice would no longer be a year-long phenomenon. The implications of this loss could be devastating for polar bears, which rely on ice floes for shelter, hunting and breeding. In response, the Bush administration recently announced a proposal to list polar bears as a "threatened" species under the Endangered Species Act.

For the first time in human history, more than one-half of the world's population lives in cities. The global urban population growth rate averages 2 percent annually (compared to an annual rural growth rate of 0.3 percent), and the number of megacities - those with populations in excess of 10 million people - has quadrupled in the past two decades. These trends are expected to continue, dominated by demographic shifts in the developing world. The United Nations predicts that more than 80 percent of population growth in the next ten years will occur in the urban areas of developing countries.

Asian and Pacific countries are home to over 3.9 billion people, over half of the world's population. With over 670 million people still living on less than $1 per day, economic growth is essential and inevitable. Annual growth of gross domestic product (GDP) in Asia and the Pacific is outstripping global growth rates, but not without environmental consequences. The latest regional State of the Environment report published by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) calls for a shift towards efficient "green growth" patterns in order to prevent worsening ecological problems.