Some of the most contentious contemporary issues confronting natural resource managers relate to scale. Global-scale changes in economies, climates, biological diversity, forests and deserts are having profound impacts on local livelihoods. Conversely the aggregate impact of actions by individual farmers, foresters and fishers are mitigating or reinforcing many of the global-scale changes. International responses are grappling with the reality that the costs and benefits of these changes, and of measures to mitigate them, do not accrue equally to all people. The quickest and most effective way to slow climate change would be to reduce fossil fuel use in industrialised countries. However, the inhabitants of those countries are unwilling to suffer the decline in their standard of living that would result. One way to conserve biological diversity would be to lock-up the world's remaining rainforests in parks and protected areas, but the inhabitants of the countries where these forests occur are unwilling to forego the economic benefits of exploiting the forests and the land that lies under them. Within industrialised countries, it is now common for those who incur the costs of environmental protection to be compensated by those who enjoy the benefits. Billions of euros are spent every year in the European Union to pay farmers to use their land in ways that maintain environmental values. In Europe, these payments are no longer called subsidies: they are payments for the amenity values, wildlife and landscapes that are now amongst the products of multi-functional agriculture.