EDITORIAL Editorial

Cities and protected areas: an oxymoron or a partnership? That the world is becoming increasingly urbanised is scarcely news. Today, half the world’s population lives in cities. It is, nonetheless, worth considering present and possible future trends, especially their implications for protected areas. For most of human history, the vast majority of people lived in sparsely-settled rural areas, often quite isolated and even at war with neighbouring populations. Under such conditions, conserving biodiversity through protected areas was hardly an issue. But as people started moving to cities, as part of an inexorable economic process of globalisation, human populations began to expand and protected areas became necessary. Urbanisation has led to the concentration of political power in cities, which has in turn tended to foster policies favouring urban over rural areas. Various forms of subsidies make food and other basic goods cheaper in the city, discourage agricultural investment, and attract rural people into urban areas. Most developing country governments have encouraged the growth of their large cities as a means of linking their domestic economy with the rest of the globe. Thus for many countries, the capital city controls the trade between urban areas and both rural an