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While there is growing awareness that cities affect almost every ecosystem on earth, significantly contribute to the loss of biodiversity, and are increasingly vulnerable to environmental change, a global analysis of the environmental impacts of urbanization has been lacking. While previous studies have examined particular cities or a particular facet of the urban environment, few attempts have been made to assess the prospects for supporting ecosystem services on an urbanized planet. On the one hand, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), the world’s largest assessment of ecosystems, covered almost every ecosystem in the world but made few references to urban areas. On the other, the World Development Report, the world’s largest assessment of urbanization published by the World Bank annually, makes few references to ecosystems. It is this knowledge gap we attempt to bridge by this book and the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook (CBO) project at large. The production of the book has been called for through paragraph six of Decision X/22 of the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 10) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya 2010. The decision initiated two publications. The first publication, Cities and Biodiversity Outlook–Action and Policy, 4 intended for policy makers, was launched at the COP11 meeting of the CBD in Hyderabad in October 2012. The CBO–Action and Policy showcases best practices and lessons learned from cities across the world, and provides information on how to incorporate the topics of biodiversity and ecosystem services into urban agendas and policies.