Outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal, Christmas Day 1969. Today every inch of the landscape is covered with houses; the mountains cannot be seen through the smog. Rapidly increasing populations in many parts of the developing world, environmental degradation and the demise of rural economies have contributed to a rapid increase in the number of people living in cities.

Refugees from East Pakistan arriving in India during the Bangladesh war in 1971. 10 million people crossed the border during the conflict. A sea level rise of one metre would displace an estimated 20 million people in India and Bangladesh.

Haiti today. In a letter to King Ferdinand of Spain in 1493, Christopher Columbus described sighting the island: "Its lands are high; there are in it many sierras and very lofty mountains, beyond comparison with that of Tenerife. All are most beautiful, of a thousand shapes; all are accessible and are filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, so that they seem to touch the sky. I am told that they never lose their foliage, and this I can believe, for I saw them as green and lovely as they are in Spain in May, and some of them were flowering, some bearing fruit, and some at another stage, according to their nature." Some 98% of Haiti's forests have been cut down since 1960 and turned into charcoal cooking fuel.

Seabird caught in an oil spill, Brazil. © D. Rodrigues/UNEP/Still Pictures.

The body of a man whose family is too poor to buy wood for his cremation lies on a sandbank behind the Taj Mahal. Agra, India

Hard rain, Haiti.

A child suffering from malnutrition in a remote village in Haiti.

A stream of meltwater cascading off the vast Arctic ice sheet which covers Greenland, now melting because of global warming. © Professor R. J. Braithwaite/Still Pictures.

Amazon jungle being burned to expand agricultural land, Brazil. © John Maier/Still Pictures.

One of the 4.7 million British cattle suspected of having Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). For 10 years the government told the people that there is no evidence that BSE can be transmitted to humans. In fact, it can be transmitted to people and is a fatal illness. © Nigel Dickinson/Still Pictures.

Portraits of political prisoners tortured during the Pol Pot regime. Tuol Sleng prison camp, Cambodia. © Mike Kolloffel/Still Pictures.

Child with a toy gun, Bucharest, Romania.

Hard rain, Haiti.

Suri Amazonian children watch a bulldozer cutting a logging road through their reservation, Brazil.

Children scavenge rubbish from Manila Bay. It will be sold through a chain of dealers and eventually recycled. Philippines. © Hartmut Schwarzbach/UNEP/Still Pictures.

Above & Below

Glacier in Jacabamba Valley, Peru, photographed in 1980 by Bryan Lynas and in 2002 by his son Mark. © Bryan and Mark Lynas/Still Pictures.

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