Following the report by the World Commission on Environment and Development, research efforts devoted to sustainable development were promoted by the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research (FRN). With its fifteen essays by Swedish scholars on different aspects of society - environment interface, giving various analyses of and prospects for the concepts of sustainable development - this book is a result of those efforts. The authors represent a spectrum of inter- and multidisciplinary approaches in the field of ecology, economy and environment. They are economists, ecologists, engineers, anthropologists, physicists, geographers, political scientists, science theorists and educationalists discussing sustainable development and the future of society and the environment. The question is also raised whether there is a special Swedisch "touch" - with a "responsbility for the world" ethos - to the approach to environmental issues, especially as seen through the efforts of the research community.