Jim MacNeill was the principal author of Our Common Future, hailed as `the most important document of the decade on the future of the world'. Beyond Interdependence builds on that report to demonstrate the relationship between the global environment, the world's economy, and the international order.

Predicting that environmental and resource depletion will become the primary source of human and interstate conflict in the near future, the authors propose a range of new national security strategies that will lift the `ecological shadow' and alleviate world poverty.