"An evergreen revolution, with benefits in perpetuity, has to take an integrated approach, considering land management, water management, exploitation of resources and genetic diversity.

-M.S. Swaminathan

"We can do a lot of leapfrogging of technology, but one thing we cannot leapfrog is agricultural development."

-Pedro Sanchez

"Very little research on sustainable development has been done by the developing countries themselves. The poor will always be poor unless they build the capacity to do research."

-Saleemul Huq

"We have assumed that conservation is a task for technicians, when in fact the only way we can make a difference is to have some kind of convergence between where the action is and where knowledge creation is taking place."

-Calestous Juma

"There is enormous pressure from all kinds of political agents and entrepreneurs to develop at any cost. The role of environmental agencies is not to be an impediment to development, for they will surely be overruled, but to lead the way to technologies that can contribute to a sustainable future."

-José Goldemberg

"The Biosphere Reserve project offers an opportunity for reconciliation between the city and its long-estranged natural home."

-Cynthia Rosenzweig

"We need the explicit involvement of science advisors for urban needs, goals and policies."

-George Bugliarello

"It may seem that it is the green agenda that requires the new science while the brown agenda is old and just requires political will, but truly we don't understand very well the environmental health problems of low income neighborhoods."

-Gordon McGranahan

"The urban agenda is almost exclusively associated with the brown agenda: water supply, sanitation, air quality and waste collection. This agenda has been closely linked to the policy/environmental nexus."

-Jo Beall

"We have entered the sixth mass extinction of life on this planet, this one due to human activities. This is my memo to Johannesburg: Making the transition to sustainability is the most important challenge of our time. If we can't figure out how to do it, nothing else matters."

-Jane Lubchenco

"Half of all the world's biodiversity is concentrated in about ten percent of the earth's area. It is locally and regionally where the problems of balancing biodiversity and development lie."

-Stuart Pimm

"Marine reserves offer us an extraordinary and humbling lesson: we can get more out of the sea by leaving some of it alone."

-Callum Roberts

"We do not have generations to solve these problems."

-George Rupp

"The Convention on Biological Diversity is a global treaty, but biodiversity actions must be national and local. We need to develop the right institutions within countries to carry out research and decision-making needed at those levels."

-Cristián Samper

"There is no place where the rules of biodiversity protection created in Rio have been translated into law and action at the national level."

-Calestous Juma

"The ratio of people between 15 and 59 is doubling in many developing countries currently. This is a tremendous opportunity for a decrease in poverty if employment and earning potential is available."

-Michael Lipton

"We have to address the consequences of plenty for the poor of the world. Agriculture needs to become central to development again. The funding is stagnating even as the agenda becomes much more diverse. There is a tremendous need for combining public policy with science."

-Uma Lele

"By spending just one cent out of every ten dollars earned in industrialized countries, roughly $25 billion annually, we could control the spread of HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and TB; we could end death during childbirth and from diarrheal disease. We could save 25,000 lives daily, 8-10 million annually for this amount. This is a bargain on a global scale."

-Jeffrey Sachs

"It is clear that tourism is a major driver of land preservation in several parts of the world. If we want to make a dent in habitat conservation, the way forward is to continue finding mechanisms by which we can reap value from the way we use the land."

-Geoffrey Heal

"Small scale solutions won't generate the necessary commitment to solve problems."

-David Dickson

"There can be no solution for endangered coral reefs without tackling global climate change."

-Callum Roberts

"It is the Academy's moral responsibility to conceptualize the means to produce a sustainable planet."

-Michael Crow