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Mounting human numbers, excessive resource consumption in developed countries, chronic poverty in developing nations and widespread environmental degradation provide a familiar backdrop to today’s debate on how sustainable development can be achieved. Development must be people-centred, but conservation-based. It must involve the integrated, multi-purpose management of the environment. Protected areas have to be treated as one element in this multi-purpose approach. Planning has to be based on critical analysis (and extrapolation) of current trends, and improved models of complex socio-economo-environmental systems. A scenario of the world in 2025 is presented as a basis for analysing how habitats and environmental management, including that of protected areas, may need to respond. Problems are likely to be most acute in Mediterranean and semi-arid areas, and in both the dry and humid tropics. National agencies responsible for protected areas will need to work as a part of much broader cross-sectoral groups working for sustainable development.