Urban Ecosystem Services

Purpose and approach

The Urban Ecosystem Services panel will to work at the interface of academia and practice, tangibly contributing to relevant knowledge on how urban ecosystems are planned, created, and managed to contribute to more sustainable cities. The objective is to gain more knowledge about how practical work around urban ecosystem services is carried out, especially in municipalities in Skåne. Furthermore, the intention is to increase understanding of how the link between quality of urban ecosystem services affects its ability to deliver ecosystem services, and how to actively work to strengthen these aspects in the municipal administrations.

As part of the work of the panel, we will actively work on three activities: to create a more robust picture of knowledge needs in this area, with a concentration on Skåne, to perform a knowledge review of the salient themes based on the needs of practitioners, and to foster improved communication between research and practice in the area of urban ecosystem services.

Background

There are political decisions that ecosystem services should be included in spatial planning activities.  Despite this, many obstacles remain regarding an effective implementation of ecosystem services in municipal planning. There are significant differences in the bases between different municipalities in Skåne to carry out these actions. Simultaneously, there are several innovative research projects at universities in the region, as well as at national and international levels.

Implementing ecosystem service concepts requires an anchoring them the local context and municipal administration; this creates requirements for transferring knowledge gained from international and national research to practice. As a part of the panel, we will actively work to identify and transfer this knowledge by looking at the needs of individual municipalities, producing research reviews to systematize knowledge, as well as creating active communication between research and practice.