Why UNPEC? A research program supported by unpec Urban National Parks In Emerging Countries & Cities Increasingly urbanized landscapes put growing pressure on the natural systems they transform: higher concentrations of people demand more Scientific Partners : land, water and opportunity than smaller populations. Yet to meet the needs of human communities, the natural systems they depend upon must be preserved. One common and effective strategy for this is to protect areas; but in urban settings, this can turn out to be particularly complex. Over a four-year period (2012-2015), UNPEC will conduct an interdisciplinary program of applied research on Cape Town, Mumbai, Nairobi and Rio and their respective Urban National Parks. In such settings, the interdependence between people and nature may seem to be obvious – but often, it appears City and Park management are undertaken as though they were separate activities. UNPEC will work to understand the implications and consequences of decoupled dynamics. For Protected Area Managers and Urban Institutions: UNPEC and the Urban Protected Area (UPA) Network offer an independent perspective on the interaction between each City and its adjacent National Park. The comparative dimension of this work will also afford several opportunities to interact directly with your counterparts from other Urban Protected Areas, as part of our ongoing interactive discussion about the specificities of managing nature in and for the benefit of urban settings. Further information : For Researchers: UNPEC and the UPA Network offer fertile ground for www.upa-network.org empirical and theoretical work on the representations of nature in the city by different stakeholders, on spatial and social segmentation, on the Site Coordinators: economic benefits ecosystem services, on environmental risk abatement Nairobi: Bernard Calas – IFRA-Nairobi -
[email protected] through ecosystem-based land management, circulation of global Mumbai: Frédéric Landy – Université Paris Nanterre models, multi-scale interactions, etc.