Citizens expect their governments to lead on sustainability. But from largely disappointing international conferences like Rio II to the U.S.'s failure to pass meaningful climate legislation, governments' progress has been lackluster. That's not to say leadership is absent; it just often comes from the bottom up rather than the top down.  Action--on climate, species loss, inequity, and other sustainability crises--is being driven by local, people's, women's, and grassroots movements around the world, often in opposition to the agendas pursued by governments and big corporations. These diverse efforts are the subject of the latest volume in the Worldwatch Institute's highly regarded "State of the World" series. The 2014 edition, marking the Institute's 40th anniversary, examines both barriers to responsible political and economic governance as well as gridlock-shattering new ideas.

Contributions by: David W. Orr, Tom Prugh, Michael Renner, Conor Seyle, Matthew Wilburn King, Matt Leighninger, Diana Lind, John Gowdy, Monty Hempel, Peter Brown, Jeremy J. Schmidt, Cormac Cullinan, Isabel Hilton, Sam Geall, Shakuntala Makhijani, Aaron Sachs, Robert Engelman, Michael L. Weber, Inge Kaul, Maria Ivanova, Rick Worthington, Sean Sweeney, Thomas Palley, Gar Alperovitz, Colleen Cordes, David Bollier, Burns Weston, Petra Bartosiewicz, Marissa Miley, Evan Musolino, Katie Auth, Nina Netzer, Judith Gouverneur, Josephine Mitschke, Ian Johnson, Yu Hongyuan