This report is different from its distinguished predecessors - Brandt and Brundtland. First, the end of the Cold War and the worldwide trends towards democratization and economic reform have opened up unprecedented opportunities to discard old thinking and embrace new proposals. Secondly, the Commission has spent much time developing practical proposals in specific countries - which are already making an impact.

Among the wide-ranging ideas put forward are those for a global cooperative security system supported by a standing world army; strategies for full employment in both the industrial and developing countries; an agricultural revolution to eliminate hunger, reduce inequality and promote jobs and economic growth; and an approach to rapid transition in Eastern Europe and the former soviet Union that accelerates growth without the damage to people's lives wrought by the recent headlong rush to marketization.

The Commission delivers a message of hope - but hope rooted in the realities of human resourcefulness and practical measures that citizens' groups, governments and international institutions could take up. It is a message we all should heed and act upon.