The main purpose of this book is to bring to the reader an idea of the nature of the struggles being waged to individuals and voluntary groups across the world, and especially in India, to protect the environment.

This book describes major environmental changes in India. It's a balance sheet of India's resources and focuses attention on the effect of ecological degradation on the poor. The interesting thing in the second report is the information that is provides on the linkages that operate on what can be called the interface areas: at the interfaces between different ecological spaces like croplands, grazing lands and forests; between the people and their environment; between economies of towns and villages, and so on.