Stockholm Resilience Centre Research for Governance of Social-Ecological Systems Master’s Thesis, 60 ECTS Ecosystems, Resilience and Governance Master’s programme 2010/12, 120 ECTS Challenges and opportunities for governing ecosystem services in an urban world A systematic review and synthesis Marte Sendstad MSc thesis Ecosystems, Resilience and Governance Stockholm Resilience Centre Marte Sendstad Challenges and opportunities for governing ecosystem services in an urban world: a systematic review and synthesis Supervisor: Thomas Elmqvist Co-Supervisor: Cathy Wilkinson 1 Abstract Governance of ecosystem services for an urban population is an issue that is of global concern as people all over the world are moving into cities, and cities are also drawing on ecosystem services from all over the world. Efforts in science and policy have however been lagging behind in understanding and responding to the complex relationship between urbanisation and ecosystem services. To assess the state of the art in the scientific literature regarding governance of urban ecosystem services, a methodology for systematic review and qualitative synthesis was designed and applied drawing on the experiences from health science and grounded theory. The approach was found to be useful in handling a large and diverse body of information and categorizing the main challenges and opportunities in governance of urban ecosystem services found in the literature. The results suggest that challenges can broadly be related to lack of knowledge, equity, lack of institutional capacity, conflicting views among stakeholders, and finally, decision makers often prioritizing economic growth over ecosystem services (ES) provision. Two over-arching challenges found are related to scale mismatch and trade-offs, suggesting that governance of ES should be considered in terms of its effects on different temporal and spatial scales, associated trade-offs, also in terms of beneficiaries. The main opportunities identified relate to planning and management – principles, approaches and tools, civil society as a source of knowledge and management capacity, participatory learning processes, leadership and ecological citizenship. Research and governance need to recognize how urban societies influence and depend upon ecosystem processes and to strengthen the evidence base for urban ES governance. This is the first time a systematic review and synthesis has been performed addressing this topic. It aims to support the emerging discipline of urban ecology, and policy by informing the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook. 2 Table of content Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 5 An emerging environmental agenda ....................................................................................... 6 Problem statement .................................................................................................................. 7 Research questions .................................................................................................................. 7 Structure of the thesis and limitation ...................................................................................... 8 Theoretical context ................................................................................................................... 9 What is an urban area? .......................................................................................................... 10 Ecosystem services ............................................................................................................... 10 Governance ........................................................................................................................... 13 Method ..................................................................................................................................... 15 Introduction to method ......................................................................................................... 15 The traditional review and the systematic review ............................................................... 15 Grounded theory .................................................................................................................. 19 The method designed ............................................................................................................ 20 Results and synthesis .............................................................................................................. 26 Search report from systematic review .................................................................................. 26 The main challenges found for governance of urban ES ..................................................... 29 The main opportunities found for governance of urban ES ................................................ 44 Discussion ................................................................................................................................ 59 Synthesis of challenges and opportunities ........................................................................... 59 Discussion related to method ............................................................................................... 67 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 72 References ............................................................................................................................... 73 Appendix A ............................................................................................................................. 86 Appendix B .............................................................................................................................. 95 3 Acknowledgements: I would first like to thank my supervisors, Cathy and Thomas, for their advice and for involving me in the work on the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook. I would also like to thank Oliver, Andre, Chantal and Fabiana for welcoming me to the CBD secretariat as a part of the cities and local authorities’ team and taking the time to comment on my preliminary results. I would like to thank Sue, Lars K, and Karianne H for sharing insight and literature. I would also thank my fellow students for the time spent at SRC and in particular my thesis group for their feedback on my work. Finally, I would like to thank Sverre who has been an important support throughout the time spent on this study. 4 Introduction The world is becoming increasingly more urban; close to 70% of the global human population has been estimated to be living in cities by 2050 (OECD 2012). Even though rates of urbanisation are slowing, the size and the numbers of cities are still growing (UN POP 2011, Potts 2012). The urbanizing trends are most drastic in the developing countries (UN POP 2011, OECD 2012); where cities are estimated to absorb more than 95% of the total expected population growth (Grimm et al. 2008). Nature is the life support system of our society, and people in cities, as elsewhere, depend on ecosystems for their life and welfare (Odum 1989, Daily 1997). Ecosystem services are however largely being degraded and unsustainably used (MA 2005, CBD 2010a). The unambiguous trend towards a more urban world increasingly gives cities an important role in global environmental governance as centres of demand of ecosystem services (ES) and accordingly, sources of environmental impact, representing a risk of eroding the capacity of ecosystems to support human welfare within and beyond cities (Kroll et al. 2012). It has been shown that urban populations depend on ES provided by land often covering several hundred times the area covered by the city (Rees & Wackernagel 1996, Folke et al. 1997, Warren-Rhodes & Koenig 2001). Governance of such ES for an urban population is therefore an issue that is of global concern as people all over the world are moving into cities, and cities are also drawing on ecosystem services from all over the world. Urbanisation is however not inherently a threat to ES. Cities will have a large impact on demand of ES merely due to hosting a large population, but it is arguably an effective spatial organisation using less land per capita (for inhabitancy) and holding potential economies of scale that is of particular relevance to a growing global population (Glaeser 2011, McDonald & Marcotullio 2011, Puppim de Oliveira et al. 2011). The relationship between the urban populations and ES are complex, and a growing number of studies have focussed on understanding the interlinked social and ecological dynamics of cities within the emerging field of urban ecology (Young & Wolf 2006). Knowledge of the diversity of insights from different disciplines and approaches to this topic is however dispersed, and there has not been any comprehensive scientific review of the experiences of the challenges and opportunities in 5 governing ES for an urban population. Doing a review and developing methodology for dealing with this kind of complex and interdisciplinary knowledge to inform policy is therefore timely. An emerging urban environmental agenda Cities started to grow rapidly in Europe and North-America following the industrial revolution. Soon, pollution became a serious issue affecting