Summary

This timely, pathbreaking report examines the challenges that face all countries, both rich and poor, in the last years of the century. There is a growing human crisis, as families and communities encounter the pressures of global competition, migration, and reductions in public spending, as well as an environmental crisis, with the combined explosion of population and consumption threatening the stability of our oceans and climate.
The Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life, headed by Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, former Prime Minister of Portugal, outlines bold goals to confront these crises. Its controversial report places women at the center of development, and caring at the center of public policy, arguing that there must be a new focus on sustainable quality of life in order to slow population growth and reduce our impact on the environment. Both readable and lively, this authoritative work covers a broad spectrum of social problems from hunger, illiteracy, and domestic violence to unemployment and family planning. It goes on to offer strategic views on addressing these complex issues, such as designing policies around quality of life concerns, new forms of governance based on democracy, and a new emphasis on the worldwide threat of crime, disease, pollution, and environmental hazards rather than warfare.
The members of the Commission bring leadership and experience at an international level in politics, health, development, environment, and science. Edited by Paul Harrison, author of the best-selling Inside the Third World, this comprehensive and innovative work is based on solid research and contains powerful personal testimonies from regional hearings of the Commission in Africa, India, the Philippines, Asia, Latin America, the United States, and Russia.
Hard-hitting and controversial, Caring for the Future offers those interested in environmental studies, women's studies, and the social sciences a new way of approaching quality of life issues.