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Urban Systems and Ecosystem Services: Maximizing Benefits and Managing Sustainability

Explore the intersection of urban systems and ecosystem services to maximize benefits and sustainable management. Understand the implications for ecosystem functioning and human well-being in urban areas.

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Urban Systems and Ecosystem Services: Maximizing Benefits and Managing Sustainability

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  1. Roy Haines-Young, Centre for Environmental Management, School of Geography, University of Nottingham roy.haines-young@nottingham.ac.uk

  2. Who said this and when? • A system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. It tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but that are (as far as we know) essential to its healthy functioning. It assumes falsely, that the economic parts of the biological clock will function without the uneconomic parts.

  3. Thinking about ecosystem services in the context of urban systems is a fundamental challenge for the future. • Already most of us are urban dwellers… • Majority of projected population growth is expected to occur in cities • Worldwide 1.75 billion new urban residents are expected by 2030, most concentrated around fairly small cities in developing countries (UNPD, 2005). • At global scales the impact of land use change on biodiversity by 2100 is likely to be more significant than climate change, nitrogen deposition, species introductions and changing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (Chapman et al. 2007; Sala et al. 2000) • Implications for ecosystem services….

  4. Ecosystem service cascade • Ecosystem services are the outputs of ecosystem functioning that directly contribute to human well-being….

  5. Ecosystem service cascade • Ecosystem services are the outputs of ecosystem functioning that directly contribute to human well-being….

  6. Ecosystem service cascade • Or are outputs dependent on the abotic, urban fabric count too?

  7. Service providing units (SPUs) & Ecosystem Service Providers (ESP) Luck et al. (2009) BioScience 59: 223–235

  8. E.g. Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius) in oak forest in the National Urban Park of Stockholm, Sweden E.g. Pest control….and some regulation services? Luck et al. (2009) BioScience 59: 223–235

  9. Bayesian Belief Network

  10. Bayesian Belief Network

  11. Ecosystem service cascade • Ecosystem services are the outputs of ecosystem functioning that directly contribute to human well-being…. • Are we dealing with ecosystem services OR environmental services? • AND are we dealing with only those services generated by urban systems and those on which they depend or affect? ‘The net flow of ecosystem services is invariably into rather than out of urban systems…. ’ (MA, 2005, Ch27) The Urban Funnel Model (Luck et al. 2001)

  12. Is the value of services supplied to urban systems fully recognised? What are the limits of supply? • What can be done within urban areas to manage demand sustainably? What kinds of service can urban systems generate? • How can we minimise the ‘dis-benefits’ flowingfromurban systems and maximise the benefits

  13. Is the value of services supplied to urban systems fully recognised? What are the limits of supply? • Market vs non-market goods • ‘PES’ schemes & creating markets for environmental services • Investment in public goods….

  14. What can be done within urban areas to manage demand sustainably? What kinds of service can urban systems generate? • Exploitation and design of urban structures and processes • Retro-fitting urban areas to help manage consumption and impacts • ‘Decoupling’ and ‘reconnecting’ • Understandings of place and locality… and their hinterlands!

  15. How can we minimise the ‘dis-benefits’ flowingfromurban systems and maximise the benefits • Urban expansion • 8% of terrestrial vertebrate species on the IUCN Red List are threatened by urban development (McDonald et al. 2008). • Managing ‘downstream’ effects by planning and design (e.g. Jansson & Colding, 2008) • Cities as net exporters of ecosystem services?

  16. In 1946 the economist Sir John Hicks defined (true or sustainable) income as the amount a person can consume over a given period and still be as well off at the end of that period as at the beginning…. Human made capital Benefit flows R R Natural capital R Benefit flows R .. And so our planning system must take account of the reinvestment we need to sustain that natural capital

  17. Who said this and when? • A system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. It tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but that are (as far as we know) essential to its healthy functioning. It assumes falsely, that the economic parts of the biological clock will function without the uneconomic parts.

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