Global Environmental Governance (GEG) is the sum of organizations, policy instruments, financing mechanisms, rules, procedures and norms that regulate the processes of global environmental protection. Since environmental issues entered the international agenda in the early 1970s, global environmental politics and policies have been developing rapidly.

Global environmental change (GEC) is among the most severe challenges facing mankind today. It is a suite of environmental change problems, climate change being the most studied of all. Global environment includes physical, chemical, and biological processes that are necessary for life-supporting services on the earth. No studies on a single environmental component will be meaningful for GEC, if viewed in isolation. It is the feedback between various components that assumes greater importance for GEC and, hence, the term GEC involves changes in various components of the environment.

With globalization fast becoming an irreversible process, it is necessary to pay increased attention to the implications for environmental sustainability. However, the so-called environmental Kuznets curve argument implies that rapid economic growth in many developing countries should be environmentally unsustainable. Environmental Sustainability addresses this dichotomy and articulates a notion of consumption sustainability that is both universal and pertains to the indefinite future.

Since the 1960s, the world's population has more than doubled and agricultural production per person has increased by a third. Yet this growth in production has masked enormous hidden costs arising from widespread pesticide use - massive ecological damage and high incidences of farmer poisoning and chronic health effects.