The Challenge that faces both the developed and developing world is to achieve and sus tain desirable economic development and change, and social change. This must be achieved in the real world and in an ever changing political, social, economic and physi cal climate and against the background of ever increasing population pressure on the fi nite resources of the world.Recent events have shown that much of our development activities and the way in which we have managed and used the resources of the planet have caused environmental dam age, degraded our resource base and polluted our air, water and land. SustainabilityWe must learn to manage our environment in a sustainable way. The concept of sustain able development has gained widespread recognition following the publication in 1987 of the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development entitled 'Our Common Future'. The report concluded that it is possible to have development without destruction. It rejected the philosophy of 'zero growth' as the only way to protect our envi ronment, and demonstrated that, with wise management and the use of appropriate tech nologies, it is possible to have economic growth and conserve natural resources; indeed they are both essential to each other and mutually reinforcing. AcknowledgementI should like to thank my colleague Professor Tan Jianan and staff at the Institute of Geo graphy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, as well as associates at the