Reconnecting cities to the biosphere: stewardship of green infrastructure and urban ecosystem services

Abstract

Within-city green infrastructure can offer opportunities and new contexts for people to become stewards of ecosystem services. We analyze cities as social-ecological systems, synthesize the literature, and provide examples from more than 15 years of research in the Stockholm urban region, Sweden. The social-ecological approach spans from investigating ecosystem properties to the social frameworks and personal values that drive and shape human interactions with nature. Key findings demonstrate that urban ecosystem services are generated by social-ecological systems and that local stewards are critically important. However, land-use planning and management seldom account for their role in the generation of urban ecosystem services. While the small scale patchwork of land uses in cities stimulates intense interactions across borders much focus is still on individual patches. The results highlight the importance and complexity of stewardship of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services and of the planning and governance of urban green infrastructure.

Fig. 1

Local user groups and stewardship of regulating ecosystem services in urban green areas. a Domestic gardens support biodiversity and species of significance in, e.g., pest control and seed dispersal (photo Carl Folke). b Allotment gardens provide critical habitats and food sources during vulnerable animal life history stages (photo Stephan Barthel). c Community gardens generate ecosystem services like pollination that spill over into the wider landscape (photo Johan Colding). d Urban golf courses function as stepping stones for keystone species with ponds hosting amphibians including endangered and keystone species (photo Stefan Lundberg). (e) Trees improve air quality and sequester carbon (photo Azote). f Green spaces within cities consist of remnants of biodiversity-rich cultural habitats in an otherwise fragmented landscape (photo Jakob Lundberg)

Fig. 2

Comparatively little attention is paid to the meso-scale and cross-scale interactions are not recognized among planners and managers of urban green infrastructure (from Borgström et al. 2006)

Fig. 3

To support the continuous generation of urban ecosystem services, governance structures are needed that connect local experiential knowledge of ecosystem management with those of higher scale understanding outlined in the figure. In such arrangements, the broker position in social networks should be identified and strengthened since it may be needed to link ecosystem stewards across scales, and on different sides of sectoral and administrative boarders. Such scale-crossing brokers might be complemented with more ecologically focused mid-scale managers (Ernstson et al. 2010) (figure from Ernstson et al. 2010)