Urban forestry: cities, trees and people

Given the monumental challenges facing today's world - widespread poverty, urban blight, illiteracy, tropical deforestation and the threat of nuclear war, to name only a few - it may seem quite irrelevant to devote an issue of Unasylva to the rather tame-sounding subject of urban forestry. To millions of homeless or starving or unemployed people in the urban centres of the developing world, how important can urban forestry really be? In truth, urban forestry, as sometimes practiced, does tend to benefit the well-to-do at the expense of the underprivileged. But this does not necessarily have to be the case. In fact, urban forestry - like rural-oriented community forestry - offers an opportunity to bring the benefits of trees directly to the people. While these benefits may not be so familiar as - or may be quite different from - those in a rural setting, they nonetheless exist.