In the opening session the Chairman of the Seminar underlined the important role of the permanent monitoring panels with respect to the 15 planetary emergencies. A special session of the Seminar was devoted to reporting on the activity of these panels. Short papers, abstracts and transparencies in the opening session introduced the subjects of the contributions: 'Climatology and El Nino' (Nadia Pinardi, Neville Nicholls, Congbin Fu, Akimasa Sumi, William Sprigg and Llowell Wood) and 'Desertification' (Douglas Johnson, Xinmin Liu, Lennart Olsson and Norman Rosenberg). Contributions on...