The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was the largest environmental conference in history. From it emerged a body of environmental legal principles designed to address the conflict between sustaining economic development and the need for global solutions to pressing environmental problems such as climate change, acid rain, ozone depletion, and nuclear accidents. In this well-researched study, Ranee K. L. Panjabi argues that the real challenge facing the self-interested nation-states that participated will be to look beyond their own boundaries to the welfare of the planet as a whole and actually implement the Rio environmental principles.