defining an ecosystem approach to urban management and policy development

7/27/2019 Defining an Ecosystem Approach to Urban Management and Policy Development

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Dening an Ecosystem Approachto Urban Management andPolicy Development


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Acknowledgements

This policy brief outlines an ecosystem approachto urban management presented at the CapacityDevelopment and Scoping Workshop on PreliminaryPrinciples for an Ecosystem Approach to UrbanManagement held at UNU/IAS, Tokyo from 710 April

2003 in cooperation with the ASEAN secretariat.The report is based on work conducted at theInstitute and builds on previous collaborations withthe UNESCOMan and the Biosphere Programmeand the World Health OrganizationHealthy CitiesProgramme. The paper sets forth an ecosystemsvision of city management and policy developmentand provides the groundwork for future urbanecosystem studies and assessments. Rather thana nal product, however, the characterisations,concepts, and evidence are intended to providestimulus for further discussions in this area.

Editors:

Peter J Marcotullio and Grant Boyle

Contributing authors (in alphabetical order):

Grant BoyleSatoshi IshiiSunil Kumar KarnPeter J MarcotullioKatsunori SuzukiMuhammad Abu YusufSarantuyaa Zandaryaa

Valuable feedback was provided by William Burch, Jr,Tim Foresman, Michael Leaf, Raman Letchumanan,

Gary Machlis, Mohd Nordin Hj Hasan, Ooi GoikLing,William Rees, and Xu He.

All errors and misinterpretations are theresponsibility of the authors.

For further information, contact:

United Nations University Institute ofAdvanced Studies (UNU/IAS)55367 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, 150-8304, JapanTel +81-3-5467-2323, Fax +81-3-5467-2324Email [email protected], URL http://www.ias.unu.edu

Copyright 2003 UNU/IAS All Rights Reserved Design by Brechtje Zoet


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Dening an Ecosystem Approach to UrbanManagement and Policy Development

March 2003


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Foreword

1 Introduction

2 Why Do We Need an Ecosystem Approach to UrbanEnvironmental Management and Policy Development?

2.1 Cities in the Least Developed World

2.3 Cities in the Rapidly Developing World

2.3 Developed World Cities

2.4 Challenges for Urban Policy Development and Management

2.5 Summary

3 A Brief History of Ecosystem Approaches toUnderstanding Urban Dynamics

3.1 The City as System

3.2 The City as a Natural Entity3.3 Summary

4 An Ecosystem Approach to Urban Management4.1 Multiple Scales

4.2 Integration of Biophysical, Engineering, and Social Sciences

4.3 Adaptation and Dealing with Uncertainty

4.4 Flexible Institutions and Management

4.5 Tools and Methods

4.6 Tradeoffs and Synergies

5 Conclusions and Next Steps

Endnotes

Bibliography

Contents

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Foreword

The mission of UNU/IAS is to develop strategicapproaches to sustainable development. Inthis regard, cities, urbanization, and the urbanenvironment have always been a key area of research

for the Institute. From its inception, UNU/IAS has hadurban and regional development as a major focus. Ithas successfully employed research projects on theworlds megacities and their role in globalization

processes. Realizing the ever increasing magnitudeand complexity of urban environmental problems,the impact of city activities on wider ecologicalsystems and the social and biological aspects ofurban issues, the Institute has embarked on thetask of developing an ecosystem approach to urbanmanagement and research.

Part of the inspiration to work on an ecosystem

approach to urban management at UNU/IAS comesfrom the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment(MA). The MA was launched in 2001 as a fouryearinternational assessment of the current and futureability of the worlds ecosystems to meet humanneeds for goods and services. UNU/IAS is working inclose cooperation with the MA by coordinating itsmeeting and report outputs with MA needs. At thesame time, however, UNU/IAS Urban Ecosystemsinitiative is also directed at a wider audienceincluding scholars and urban policy makers seekinga better understanding of the conditions and costsof urban environmental challenges. The ideas in thisreport reect ongoing work with scholars and citymanagers outside UNU/IAS.

UNU/IAS wishes to express its sincere thanks to theJapanese government for its ongoing support.

A H ZakriDirector, UNU/IAS


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In recent years, environmental policy and researchcircles have advocated an ecosystem approach inlight of the growing importance of ecological issuesand the recognition of the interconnectedness of

social, economic, and environmental systems. Theecosystem approach is particularly important forurban areas. Increasingly, cumulative and systemicglobal environmental problems, ranging from poor

health due to lack of access to sanitation and watersupply, to vehicular related local air pollution, tooverconsumption and climate change can be tracedback to patterns of activities and growth in cities.With global population growth centred largely inurban areas, cities will increasingly be the locationswhere human activities and their associatedecological impacts can be most aptly met with policyand planning responses.

While cities have traditionally been seen asaberrations of nature, such a distinction neglects theopportunity to envision human built environmentsthat can exist in balance with wider ecologicalsystems. Sustainability can only be achieved whencities are approached as systems and componentsof nested systems in ecological balance with eachother. Although diverse academic elds haveproduced concepts and applications of an ecosystemapproach to understanding and managing cities, themainstream adoption of this method remains anaspiration at present. In this regard, there is a needto articulate a vision for an ecosystem approach tourban policy development and management. Thepurpose of this paper is to bring together variouselements of urban ecosystem perspectives in anattempt to develop such a vision. The centralquestion of this paper is: What characterizes anecosystem approach to urban management andpolicy development?

Any approach to urban policy development andmanagement, which aims to add value to currentpractice, must build upon or adapt to what is alreadyin place, or at least express how the new approachdeparts and adds value to those existing. This can

only be undertaken with any real rigor on a casebycase basis with managers and practitioners inspecic settings. As a rst step, this paper puts forth anumber of claims, based on a review of the literatureand the latest theoretical developments in relatedelds. In general, an ecosystem approach to policydevelopment departs from a previous emphasis onsingleissue studies developed to support commandand control regulation and places greater emphasison integration. In this regard, urban researchers mustcontemplate new and appropriate methods that bestdeal with a variety of urban trends, conditions, andimpacts simultaneously. An ecosystem approach to

management departs from a previous emphasis onrigidity and control and moves toward practices thatevolve and adjust to deal with technological change,

competing priorities, surprise impacts beyond urbanborders, and an increasing numbers of actors inurban governance.

These departures are clearly ambitious ideals. Urbanplanners are typically concerned with pressing issuesrelated to the provision of essential urban services(e.g. health care, water supply, primary education),the provision and upkeep of related public works,and the regulation of certain private activities (e.g.trades, house building land uses, trafc). Nonetheless,it is important to place practice within the contextof a wider and longerterm perspective and set ofgoals. This paper begins by discussing some priorityissues in cities around the world, followed by areview of the literature on ecosystem approaches tothe city, and concludes with an closer examination

of one particular ecosystem framework the HumanEcosystem Framework1 in order to set the stage fora discussion of some key components that mightcharacterize an ecosystem approach to urban policydevelopment and management.

1.1 Ecosystem Approaches toEnvironmental Management

In recent years, environmental policy and researchcircles have advocated various ecosystem approaches.The fth meeting of the Conference of the Parties(COP) 2000, to the Convention on BiologicalDiversity (CBD), for example, gave a description andoperational guidance on the ecosystem approachto achieve the objectives of the convention. It callsupon an ecosystembased strategy for the integratedmanagement of land, water, and living resourcesthat promotes conservation and their sustainableuse in an equitable manner.2 The CBDs ecosystemapproach, unlike conventional scientic methodsthat often assume specialization in one area, calls formultidisciplinary thinking among a variety of actorsto develop a collaborative vision of a desired future.The approach is goal and policy driven and is appliedwithin a geographic framework dened primarily

by ecological boundaries such as different land useconditions, watersheds, and groundwater systemunits. It also recognizes that humans, with theircultural diversity, are an integral component ofmany ecosystems.

Similarly, the International Development ResearchCentre in Canada3 has advocated an ecosystemapproach to human health and supports researchon the relationship between all components of anecosystem to dene and assess priority problems thataffect the health of people and the sustainability oftheir ecosystem. In pursuing the aim of improving

human health and wellbeing while simultaneouslymaintaining a healthy ecosystem, the emphasis ison the design of solutions based on holistic

1 Introduction


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residents. It seemed difcult for local governmentsto choose protection over development without theviews and comments of citizens. To cope with this,some local governments developed environmentalplans with three major components, future visions,scenarios to attain future visions, and concrete,specic programs and projects to be implemented.

Specic procedures were developed toobtain consensus.

Finally, a third approach developed by some citiesin Japan was an environmental guidance system, aunique approach to protecting the carrying capacityfor water systems, airsheds, and other ecosystems.By studying natural systems, a general appreciationfor the carrying capacity for water systems, airsheds,and other ecosystems was developed. Environmentalguidance maps were developed to illustrate thecarrying capacity of these systems, and used toprovide guidance for developers particularly in terms

of selection of the project location.

These programmes are only a selected few that haveand are using aspects of the ecosystem approach formanaging the urban environment. The increasingpopularity and worldwide acceptance of the methodemergence demonstrates a conuence of thinking,at the theoretical level, that a holistic ecologicalapproach to solving problems is needed to deal withtodays environmental problems. At the same time,however, the work on an urban ecosystem approachto urban policy development and management hasonly begun. There is a need to identify a frameworkwithin which further studies can be conducted andpolicy needs can be satised.


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2 Why Do We Need an Ecosystem Approachto Urban Environmental Management andPolicy Development?

While the environmental problems in cities in the

developed and developing world manifest differently,what is becoming increasingly evident is that thesocial and ecological components of these problemsare inseparable. Within cities everywhere, the

concerns of development and those of environmentand social welfare demand an integrated approachfor their resolution. However, different cities indifferent parts of the world at different stages ofdevelopment have varying priorities. Therefore,we have divided cities into three categories: leastdeveloped, rapidly developing, and developedworld cities.

2.1 Cities in the Least Developed World

Least developed world cities in Africa, Asia, andLatin America have experienced little benets fromglobalization ows. At the same time, they face rapidurbanization and the need to simultaneously expandand modernize their infrastructure while dealingwith profound internal socioeconomic inequalitiesas well as severe environmental deterioration. Thetremendous pressures on these locales have helpedto create both ecological and socioenvironmentalproblems within the city and surrounding hinterlands.

In general, the most critical environmental burdens oflowincome and smaller cities tend to be local, suchas inadequate and unsafe piped water supply, lack ofproper sewerage and storm water drainage, lack ofprovision for garbage collection and disposal, indoorair pollution that results from burning biomass, poorhealth care services, and others (Bartone, Bernstein,Leitmann, and Eigen, 1994; McGranahan, Songsore,and Kjellen, 1996). There are also a range of socialproblems including overcrowding, slum and squattersettlement challenges (the UNCHS suggests thatforty to fty per cent of those living in Calcutta, ftyto sixty per cent of those living in Bombay, Delhi,

Lagos, and Lusaka and sixty or more per cent ofthose living in Dar es Salaam, Kinshasa, Addis Ababa,Cairo, Casablanca, and Luanda are living in slumsand squatter settlements),11 crime, loss of greeneryand biodiversity, urban ooding, and susceptibility toother natural disasters. Hence, the ecosystems withintheir borders and in their direct hinterlandsare suffering.

Without economic growth, rapid urbanization hasencouraged the pervasion of poverty. Structuraland institutional problems, including inadequategovernance structures, land tenure arrangements,

and lack of access to credit have also encouraged thepoor to draw down the natural resources within andaround cities. They continue to denude and degrade

the landscape in search of space for living, biofuels

for cooking, and water for their daily needs (Hardoy,Mitlin, and Satterthwaite, 2001; Brundtland, 1986).Moreover, with large shares of its citizens in poverty,government revenues are low, leading to an inabilityto deal directly with these problems.

Many of these countries were hard hit by epidemicssuch as HIV/AIDS and malaria. In 1999, approximatelythirteen million people died of infectious diseases.SubSaharan Africa is home to seventy per cent ofthe worlds HIVpositive population and has bore themajority of the 2.6 million AIDS deaths. Exacerbatingthe problem is the lack of resources to put into public

health care systems. Expenditures in this area forlowincome countries averages one per cent of grossdomestic product, compared to six per cent of GDP inhighincome countries (International Federation ofRed Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2002).

Due to these factors, these cities are increasinglyvulnerable to natural disasters. Without adequategovernance and public spending, increasing numbersare locating to ood plains, within swamps, and inareas without basic water supply and sanitation.This type of growth increases the likelihood of lossof human life with natural disasters. Indeed, amongthe total reported deaths from disasters from 1992 to2001, over 53 per cent were in lowincome countriescompared to 4.4 per cent of deaths in highincomecountries (International Federation of Red Cross andRed Crescent Societies, 2002).12

International pressure from the multilateralorganisations has encouraged economic developmentwithout adequate attention to environmentaland natural resources. This pressure has impactedenvironmental/ecological relationships. One studyof over sixty countries that were in the structuraladjustment programmes of the World Bank andInternational Monetary Fund, suggested that the

lack of attention to environmental and naturalresources considerations did not put these countrieson sustainable development pathways (Reed, 1992).13Increasing pressures for privatization (of water supplydelivery for example) is creating conditions wherelocalities are subject to the inuences of decisionsmade by such international organisations as the WTOfor the delivery of basic services.

There is a small set of these cities that are beginningto experience the impacts of globalization and thetransfer of technologies as they link to the worldeconomic system. Increasingly, lower income cities

within Asia are linked to the global network of tradeand foreign direct investment (FDI). With theselinkages has come the rapid growth of motor vehicles,


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urban development and road construction in recentyears have consumed signicant amounts of theseproductive assets. California continues to loosewetlands at a rate of almost 5,000 acres per year.Other issues associated with urbanization includedegradation of water resources and water quality,changes in hydrology, increased inputs of water

pollution and nutrients, increased acidity, and higherwater temperatures of lakes, ponds, and streams (USEnvironmental Protection Agency, 2001).

Rapid increases in vehicle travel have negativelyaffected the environment in numerous ways. Thegrowth of travel degrades air quality, impairs waterquality, and increases trafc noise. Since 1970, permile motor vehicle emissions have been decreasingas a result of vehicle emissions control systems andcleaner fuels. Increasing vehicle miles travelled,however, threatens to reverse this trend in the nearfuture for carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, and

particulate matter (PM10). Further, motor vehiclesalso release hazardous air pollutants. According toan EPA study in 1993, mobile sources released abouttwentyone per cent of the 8.1 million tons of airtoxics nationwide. The release of nitrogen, metals,and various polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons thatend up in water bodies impacts water quality.Transportation is also a signicant source ofgreenhouse gas emission. In 1997, the transportationsector emitted thirtytwo per cent of US CO2emission from fossil fuels, or 473.1 million metrictons of carbon. From 1984 to 1997, carbon dioxideemissions from transportation in the US increasedby twentyve per cent (rising from 379 millionmetric tons). Yet in addition to carbon emission,vehicle travel contributes to emission of two othergreenhouse gases, methane, and nitrous oxide.Total emissions of these gases for the US in 1997were 213 metric tons of methane and 205 metrictons of nitrous oxide (US Environmental ProtectionAgency, 2001).

Consumption of resources provided through trade,is affecting ecosystems around the globe. Fromecological perspective, the growing ecologicalfootprint of these urban centres15 is typically manytimes their total administrative area. Londons

ecological footprint, for example, is 120 times thearea of the city itself and Tokyo needs 1.2 timesthe land area of all of Japan to sustain its levelsof consumption.16 Rees (2002) has calculated thatthe total footprint of all cities is now greater thanthe land area of Earth. This analysis suggests thatconsumption in cities, largely those in the developedworld, are drawing down the natural capital ofthe planet.

2.4 Challenges for Urban PolicyDevelopment and Management

Previous environmental policy successes havetypically been based upon regulations for best

technologies, arresting pollution from point sources,changing fuel types, and other fairly straightforwardpolicies, which relied on specialist knowledgeemanating from segregated elds of study. While theimportance of specialized research is not in question,both policy makers and scientists increasinglydebate its efcacy as a source of policy support for

current challenges. Decision makers dealing withenvironmental issues are demanding ways to dealwith surprise and uncertainty. Decision makers neednew approaches that focus on how to accommodaterapid changes in the environment to allow themto adapt their management strategies quickly tonew conditions.

New methods of urban environmental studieshave emerged in recent years that aim to betterintegrate sets of knowledge. The ecologicalfootprint,17 for example, provides a conceptual toolfor understanding the impacts of cities as drivers

of ecosystem change. Many new informationtechnology applications, including GIS applicationsand different modelling techniques are beingemployed. Qualitative scenarios and backcastingtechniques are also being used to help structurescience and research into more strategic applicationsand political processes. There is a need to build andexpand upon such techniques and to present resultsin a way that allows decision makers to comprehendtradeoffs among sets of objectives across issuesand scales.18

In almost all countries, providing goods and servicesto the urban citizens is the responsibility of the cityauthority, including services for basic needs as wellas other amenities such as recreation and aestheticrequirements. However, various local agenciesare often guided by national policy, where variousministries make their own priorities. Increasinglyinternational institutions, such as the WTO, theInternational Monetary Fund, and the World Bank,make decisions that impact localities. These trendsare creating policy gaps between governmentagencies, levels of government and between theprivate and public sectors.

While local governments have in the past relied

upon central government resources, as they donot have sufcient tax power, local governmentsare increasingly asked to take a more active rolein promoting coordination among the social andenvironmental dimensions of urban problems. Atthe same time, governments are rarely structured totake such an approach. While there are many callsfor integrated studies and policy coordination, suchaspirations may underestimate the legal and nancialincentives that are required for such cooperation.Much more attention needs to be given to thespecics of local and regional political processes andinstitutional competencies for urban environmental

management. One example is the degree to whichsocalled informal processes in many developingworld cities shape land use and development


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patterns. In a city with a high degree of informality(or alternatively, weak state controls), local stateagencies may not have adequate inuence on solvinglocal environmental conditions.

2.5 Summary

Trends seen differently in various parts of the world,call for new approaches to deal with the increasingcomplexity of environmental burdens and theshifting political and institutional context in whichsolutions must be developed. The method must beintegrative and provide for new ways to both attackenvironmental challenges and develop policies (e.g.,enhance public participation; develop nancial andhuman resources). It must also be exible enoughto deal with unique situations. While there are nosilver bullets to solve these growing demands,the ecosystem approach has much promise. The

ecosystem approach portends to integrate variousenvironmental issues at both different scalesand among disciplines. Further, the userdriven,adaptive management style and politically inclusiveaspects of the approach may provide for a wayforward in policy development and management intimes of uncertainty and increasing vulnerability.In order to dene fully an ecosystem approach tourban management, it is useful to rst review thetrajectories of the concepts development.


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3 A Brief History of Ecosystem Approachesto Understanding Urban Dynamics

As demonstrated in a previous section, there arecurrently a number of different approaches toenvironmental management that claim to use the

ecosystem approach. The core requirement that aspecied physical environment and its associatedorganisms are functionally linked is central to usingthis method. Many different conceptual structures

have been built upon this understanding.

Adding to the sense that the concept is being used ina variety of different ways, its application is used byan increasingly diverse set of academic disciplines.Anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, landscapearchitects, and urban planners, among others, haveused the concept of ecosystem, while drawn frombiological sciences, to dene an approach that blends

human activities and natural processes.

We argue in this section that the ecosystem conceptderives from the notion that the city is both a systemand a natural entity. Therefore, it can be approachedwith similar concepts to those used by systemsengineers and ecosystem biologists. At the sametime, there are limitations to the strict use of thisterm in the biological sense, as the linkages betweenelements and ows within the urban ecosystemare not as tight as those within a natural system.Actions of people heavily inuence cities for whichno model in any of the sciences can satisfactorypredict or explain. Thus, within the city as a naturalentity metaphor, a variety of different strands ofthinking has developed. Reviewing these notionsprovides the basis for developing an understandingof an ecosystem approach to urban management andpolicy development. The review suggests that thereare currently developed ways in which the ecosystemapproach can be used to overcome a variety ofissues that have helped to create the complexenvironmental management situations described inthe previous section.

3.1 The City as a System

The city as system has been a central metaphorfor urban management in the second half of the20th century. The systems approach is essentiallya formalized method of determining the role ofcomponents within the overall operation of a system(Exline, Peters, and Larkin, 1982). At the core of thetheory is that each system has coherence or unity,which enables us to distinguish it from other systemsand to view it as a complex whole. Thus, a system isanalogous to a set in mathematics, where what iscommon to a set is what unies and distinguishes itfrom other sets. What makes a system is not just aset in terms of distinct parts, but that it is also a set

of interconnected parts. The structure of a system isdetermined by the structure of its parts andtheir relationships.

General systems theory evolved mainly as aresponse to the increasing specialization andcompartmentalization that occurred in both the

natural and the social sciences. Systems werethought to exist in two forms: open and closed. Anopen system interacts with its environment; a closedsystem is isolated from it. Cities, or parts of cities, canbe viewed as both open and closed systems becausethey have within them nested sets of partially closedsystems, and as a unit exchange energy and materialswith the larger environment.

The systems approach to urban planning focuseson the articulation of various components of a cityand the ows and processes between them. In thissense, urban planning involves exercising control

over the workings of parts of the entire system. Thisnotion was a radical departure from previous views ofaddressing urban environmental problems. Before theapplication of the urban systems approach, planningwas largely an exercise in design.19

The new approach brought signicant changes toplanning cities. Planners and city managers wererequired to understand and appreciate the complexinterrelationships between various and diversephenomena that gave rise to urban development.Moreover, planners needed to understand howchanges in one part of the city would affect otherparts. Proposals for development were evaluatedin a signicantly different way than when ndingthe right urban form was the central focus. Systemstheory also emphasized activity, dynamism, andchange rather than producing detailed endstatemaster plans; and planners were required to produceadaptable exible plans. These documents focusedon trajectories, rather than endstate blueprintsfor a xed future. Planners, rather than having amore limited role, were given greater importancein urban development. As planning was an ongoingprocess of monitoring, analysing, and interveningin uid situations, their input was needed on a dailybasis. Approaching cities as a set of interconnected

activities mandated the need for social, economic,environmental, as well as physical and aestheticanalyses. This included a broader remit for planningthan previously encountered.

Scientists in this tradition worked with largescale quantitative models and produced specicplanning applications. These applications werebased on optimizing techniques and longrangeforecasting models. Despite the many merits ofthis approach and the value it added, there wereat least three weaknesses. First, it did not dealeffectively with the biophysical components of

the systems environment. Second, and relatedto the rst, optimization exercises were based onthe idea that all components to planning exercises


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could be evaluated on the same footing. The ideathat some environmental considerations werenot quantiable or that is was difcult to derivemonetary values necessitated their removal frommodels. Finally, the modelling and applications thatcame from the systems approach to planning werefrequently described in highly abstract, technical, and

mathematical terms. They were therefore unusable todecision makers and indeed to those not familiar withdetails of model interpretation.

3.2 The City as a Natural Entity

The notion that the city is a natural entity datesback at least to the early nineteenth century. In 1830,William Cobbett wrote of London as an organism thatspread its tentacles across the English countryside(Douglas, 1981). Often, the city was likened to thehuman body as nineteencentury urbanists described

its various functions. Recently, Melosi (2000) suggeststo his students that there is no difference between acity and an anthill. His argument is that the productof human labour should not be regarded differentlyfrom the product of other living organisms. A city,therefore, is analogous to a beaver dam or a prairiedog town. While the comparisons between citiesand natural entities cannot be extended too far, thepoint that Melosi and others have made is that citiescannot be excluded from our understanding of andresponses to the natural world.

There is a rich and varied history of the notion of thecity as natural entity. Since the nineteenth century,the concept has taken on various trajectories.Some of these lines of thinking remain today.Notwithstanding oversimplication, we have dividedthe many currents into three general categories.The rst we call the urban ecology approach. Thesecond, the city as ows approach. The third is thebiosocial approach from which developed the humanecosystem framework.

3.2.1 Urban Ecology

The urban ecology approach was and remains largely

within the realm of biology. In this understanding,ecologists have looked upon cities as unique types ofnatural ecosystems. Cities are therefore not unlikenatural landscapes (coastal scrub, grassland, oakwoodlands, marshes, and streamsides), holding awide range of species. Many of these types of studieshave applications to urban planning (see for example,Hough, 1990).

Urban ecology keeps humans and human activitiesseparate from the ecological world. Those workingwithin this approach are largely interested in theconcepts and processes of the stresses, disturbances,

structures, and functions of urban ecological systems,and how urban ecosystems relate more generally tolarger ecosystems (excluding people). These types

of studies have also been called the bioecologicalapproach (Grove and William R Burch, 1997).

Despite the separation of human and naturalprocesses, there are interesting results and newtechniques that have emerged from these studies,which have the potential to provide understanding

of the relationships between human density andvarious ecological activities. One is the examinationof changes in natural processes and conditions thatoccur along the ruralurban gradient. Another ishow natural processes can be restored within areasdisturbed by humans (Givoni, 1991). These studiesprovide details of how to reverse and deal withhumaninduced hazards and adverse health effectsand how urban ecosystem processes can be use tomitigate problems.

While these and similar studies provide insight intothe biology of systems within cities, they remain only

marginally useful in providing a policy framework fordealing with the complexities of cities, as they do notfocus on the role and inuence of social structuresand activities in ecosystems processes.

3.2.2 The Flows Approach

A technique that attempts to incorporate results ofhuman activities into the understanding of urbandynamics is dened as the ows approach. Like allecosystems, a city can be studied in terms of inputsand outputs of resources, materials, and energy. Thestudy of urban metabolism, as the rst studies inthis eld were called, began in the 1960s (Wolman,1965). This line of thinking was then promoted bythe UNESCO/MABs rst international effort toconsider cities as ecological systems. In the mid1970s, Stephen Boyden piloted the UNESCO/MABpilot project on Hong Kong as an ecological system(Boyden and Celecia, 1981). The approach viewed thecity as an ecological system with quantiable ows ofenergy materials and information. Since the humanpopulation was a dominant component, the approachrequired the study of intangible aspects of humanexperience such as feelings, perceptions, and values.

The twodecade project produced over 100 studies.

The studies were directed at increasing the efciency,selfsufciency, and humanness of cities, andminimizing their impact on near and distanthinterlands in an effort to make the city system moresustainable and liveable and to conserve resources.Notable examples of such studies and the pointsof entry of their conceptual and methodologicalframeworks include patterns of extrasomatic energyow (Hong Kong, Gotland), use of plants as indicatorsof chemical changes in the urban environment(Vienna, Rome), urban food production (Buenos Aires,Lae), urban forestry (Madrid, Xalapa), managingurban space for children (Toronto), use of sensitivity

models for urban and regional planning (LowerMainFrankfurt), and vegetation and urban climate(Dayton, Valencia).


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Important studies in cities such as Hong Kong, Rome,Barcelona, Lae, Bangkok, and Seoul encompassed aspectrum of natural and social disciplines as well asactors. Assessments of sources and ows of energyand materials (e.g., water, foodstuffs, pollutingsubstances) were complemented by studies of urbannature (with particular concern for biological and

genetic diversity in cities) and the role of culture andsocietal organisation making city living urbane.These included psychosocial studies in Hong Kongand Rome (Celecia, 1996).

From the urban metabolism school came a popularand effective adaptation of the approach todemonstrate the impact of urban activities. Theconcept of ecological footprint and carrying capacity,as forwarded by William Rees in early 1990s, hasbeen instrumental in providing the rst measureof the environmental impact of cities (Rees andWackernagel, 1996). Ecological footprint analysis

illustrates that highdensity human settlementsno longer have boundaries that coincide with landneeded for their daily activities. Thus, cities in thedeveloped world cannot achieve sustainability ontheir own. Indeed, they demonstrate that the humanhistory displays the Easter Island syndrome(Rees, 2002).

By looking at the city as a whole and by analysing thepathways along which energy and materials move,these studies have demonstrated how cities areincreasingly out of the web of natural ows. This callsfor a reintegration of urban activities with naturalprocesses, increasing the efciency of resource use,the recycling of wastes as valuable materials, andthe conservation of energy (Newcombe, Kalma, andAston, 1978). Urban metabolism studies can be usedas tools in pointing to environmental problems (andeconomic costs), related to growth of inputs (asresources), and management of outputs (primarilythe wastes). At the same time, this approach oftencalls for radical responses to these trends. This comesin the form of changes in behaviour (see for exampleRees, 2002). While these options are interesting, theyrequire restructuring of entire societies. The urbanmetabolism and ecological footprint analyses, haveprovided excellent critiques of the impact of cities on

the environment, but have been weaker on providingsolutions that city managers can use in theirdaily work.

3.2.3 Biosocial Approaches

Interestingly, sociologists also employed ecologicalmetaphors for the city. In the 1920s and 1930s,the Chicago School of Sociology applied principlesof ecology to social theory with the objective ofstudying the community as an evolutionary entity.According to Vasishth and Sloane (2002), the

founding sociologists of Chicago School derived theirurban theory from their conception of science andnature, particularly ecology and evolution. They used

work from animal ecology and cell physiology tounderstand the role of competition and cooperationas mechanisms of change and progress. Thesesociologists were the founders of the study of societythrough efforts to empirically measure and mapurban patterns and processes using principles ofecology. The management implications adopted from

this theoretical point of view essentially were basedon laise faire economics and free market attitudestoward urban development.

In the 1970s, William Burch, Jr started withthe sociological viewpoint, but added naturalcomponents to his analysis. As a result, he beganto articulate a biosocial approach to humanecosystems. He and his students examined theenergy, materials, nutrients, population, geneticand nongenetic information, labour, capital,organisations, beliefs, and myths and the knowledgethat affects the distribution of critical resources

within a human ecosystem. This work developed intothe human ecosystem framework (HEF). The humanecosystem is a coherent system of biophysical andsocial factors capable of adaptation and sustainabilityover time, and argues that human ecosystems couldbe a starting point for the management of urbanand other ecosystems (Machlis, Force, and WilliamR Burch, 1997; Pickett, William R Burch, Dalton,Foresman, Grove, and Rowntree, 1997).

The framework (See Figure 1) includes three kindsof critical resources including natural resources (e.g.energy, wood, water), socioeconomic resources (e.g.labour, capital), and cultural resources (e.g. myths,beliefs). Rather than a selfregulating system,the ows of these resources are regulated by anunpredictable social system. The social system iscomposed of three subsystems including socialinstitutions, social cycles, and the social order. Thesocial order further includes three key mechanismsfor understanding the organisation of behaviourincluding personal identities (e.g. age, gender), norms(e.g. rules for behaving), and hierarchies (e.g. wealth,power). The power of this model is the inclusion of anarray of social and biophysical factors that dene theurban ecosystem.

Machlis, et al (1997) argued the HEF is not a theory,but a conceptual framework that provides a numberof important insights in human ecosystems. First, itprovides the basis for using a systems approach tointegrate sociocultural and biophysical systems bydescribing the internal behaviour of these systemsand their interactions with each other in terms ofows and cycles of critical resources and allocationmechanisms. Second, it relates sociocultural andbiophysical patterns and processes at different scales.Third, by articulating the relationships between andamong sociocultural and biophysical patterns andprocesses, different types of system change such as

resilience, resistance, persistence, and variability arehighlighted. Fourth, it facilitates the explicit spatialmeasurement, classication, and analysis of socio


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cultural and biophysical patterns and processes.Finally, this framework ts within a broaderunderstanding of ecological systems for social andbiological scientists.

The HEF has been applied as a framework andlandscape approach in Baltimore, Maryland andmore recently in Phoenix, Arizona, and has beenincorporated into the National Science Foundationslongterm ecological research (LTER) network,established in 1980. The model is useful in providingpathways for solving everyday problems within cities

in an integrated, holistic manner. It overcomes theproblems associated with the systems approach byincluding biophysical inuences and includes humaninuences making it more useful than approachesthat exclude people.

While the HEF provides the necessary frameworkfor focusing research efforts, it does not describethe functions or processes that are inherent withinthe urban ecosystem. Further work in this area isnecessary and depends on the unique characteristicsof each city.

3.3 SummaryThe concept of ecosystem has developed as botha discipline and an approach. Its primary focuson interactions between living things and theirnonliving environments has provided a pivot forcooperation among a host of discipline spanningthe natural, social, and human sciences. Given thisagenda, it is not surprising that the ecosystemapproach provides the inspiration and underpinningof many collaborative efforts that deal with complexissues and problems related to the environmentand resources, which cannot be addressed bycompartmentalized singlediscipline approaches.

While the HEF is conceptually inclusive, deningthe causeeffect relationships combining variablesand integrating sectoral models into the overallframework remains a challenge. The HEF providesthe basis for dening a framework for urbanenvironmental management, especially giventhe need for interconnecting social, economic,and ecological systems within cities. Given thecomprehensiveness of the model, its application topolicymaking will potentially involve componentsthat allow decision makers to weigh tradeoffsamong a variety of options, as well as identify

synergistic solutions. The HEF provides a solid basisfor future urban ecosystem studies, managementapproaches, and long term urban planning.

Figure 1


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4 An Ecosystem Approach to Urban Management

What follows is not an attempt to overcomethe conceptual tensions within the variants ofthe ecosystem approaches described above, butan effort to extrapolate upon the review (with

particular emphasis on the HEF) and distil a fewaspects that could dene an ecosystem approachto urban policy development and management.The recommendations are normative and focused

on dening an ecosystem approach to urbanmanagement. They are not directed at any city andan attempt has been made to be policyrelevant notpolicyprescriptive.

In general, an ecosystem approach will aim to makecities liveable and to facilitate the internalization ofurban impacts on other ecosystems through greaterexibility in management and further integration in

policy development. More specically, we suggestthat an ecosystem approach will aim to manageover space and time scales, integrate biophysicaland social components, adapt and deal effectivelywith uncertainty, create exible institutions formanagement, visualize and identify planningproblems with appropriate tools and methodsand work to identify tradeoffs and synergies inundertaking interventions.

4.1 Multiple Scales

In terms of management, the issue of scale hasboth temporal and spatial aspects. Planners mustdifferentiate between the geographic scales ofimpacts of urban activities. Wealthier cities aretypically associated with an increasing/widerenvironmental impact, while the growth anddevelopment of urban ecosystems is related to avariety of drivers that operate at different scales. Inorder to deal with these issues, we suggest that urbanstrategies must be applied at different spatial scales.

We can look at these same scale issues over time aswell. For example, different system drivers operate atdifferent speeds. The rates of urbanization, economic

growth, technological transfer and development havefundamentally changed from what was previouslyencountered. Globalization and related ows havesped up transformations bringing both positive andnegative impacts. This should lead to rethinking ofthe applicability of policies across nations and evenwithin particular locales over periods of time.

A number of drivers that operate at different temporaland spatial scales inuence urban ecosystems.Therefore, the approach mandates that the drivers ofchange be identied in terms of their speed and scaleof impact. Appropriate interventions will necessarily

have multiple objectives and varying timeframes. Thiswill include more than a focus on immediate returns,but also with a view towards longrange goals.

Management interventions in urban ecosystemsmust take into account their impacts at differentscales. Management decisions at one scale oftenhave unknown or unpredictable effects on other

ecosystems and at ecosystems at other scales.Possible impacts need careful consideration andanalysis. The ecosystem approach must eitherwork within the current institutional frameworksor suggest creative and possible solutions (newarrangements and organisation for institutionsinvolved) to address the decision making context.

4.2 Integration of Biophysical,Engineering, and Social Sciences

In the past, the social and biophysical sciences

have had little dealings with each other and havedeveloped methodologies that prevent theirworking closely together. Increasingly, scholars andpractitioners agree that expertise from one eldalone cannot solve complex contemporary problems.The sciences must work together to solve the worldscurrent dilemmas, and nowhere is this truer than inthe worlds cities. In doing so, new ways to integratesocial issues (e.g., economics: income, employment,poverty; health: nutrition, access to water, sanitation,disease, service care; demography: urbanization,fertility, household family planning, gender) withthe physical science issues (e.g., ecology, physics,chemistry, geology, physical geography) must bedeveloped. To make these analyses most useful, thereis a strong need for issue or problems oriented work.

Managing the urban ecosystem is different frommanaging other ecosystems, due to the high inputof human activities into its structure and function.This is not to suggest physical aspects be ignored.Rather issues such as biological diversity, waterltration, soil depletion, deforestation must beintegrated with issues such as sewerage, watersupply, transportation, social institutions, and normsand values. In the past, there has been a tendencyto manage components of cities as separate and

functional units, without attempts to integrateacross areas. Problem solving efforts even leaveout some components.

Often, the research community has not been ableto translate scientic research ndings into policy.Scientic ndings have been presented in a waywhich managers nd difcult to understand. Thishas created gaps between scientists, managers,and the public. The ecosystem approach to urbanmanagement must produce scientic ndings thatcorrelate with policy and are readily accessible tothe public.


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4.3 Adaptation and Dealing withUncertainty

Increasingly, adaptive management is accepted asa legitimate urban strategy. Adaptive managementaccommodates learning, uncertainties associated withlimited knowledge, unexpected outcomes, surprise,

vulnerability, and outside shocks. The importanceof understanding that things change must beincorporated into urban management to facilitatethe mediation or accommodation of these changes.

Not only is this true at the metropolitan level, butit can be applied to all levels of society. For example,it could be applied to decisions and actions taken byindividuals, in terms of the rethinking the level ofcommitment to personal plans and strategies, and atthe household level, in terms of how families respondto rapid and unexpected changes. In general, toooften plans and strategies are created that are not

exible enough to deal with the variety of surprisesthat are increasingly experienced within cities andthe larger ecosystems within which they impact.

Urban ecosystems change, including population,economy, environments, species composition,relations to hinterlands, water and air quality,biodiversity, soils, and forests. Management regimesshould be able to adapt to changes. Apart fromtheir inherent dynamics of change, ecosystemsare beset with a complex of uncertainties andpotential surprises in the human, biological, andenvironmental realms. The ecosystem approach mustutilize adaptive management in order to anticipateand cater to such changes and events, and should becautious in making any decision that may forecloseoptions, but consider mitigating actions to copewith longterm changes such as climate change.The adaptive management is itself a learning,experimenting, and improving process and reducesthe uncertainty by incorporating it into decisionmaking process.

4.4 Flexible Institutions andManagement

The principle of subsidiarity states that managementshould be decentralized to the lowest appropriatelevel possible. This ultimately, it is argued, providesfor better coordination of programs and activitiesand promotes participation of stakeholders atdifferent levels.

Decentralization implicates many issues besidespolitical systems including tradition and culturerelated matters, and these institutions vary widelyamong countries and regions. Implicit in this principleis the match of management capacity (institutionaland human resource) and authority (e.g. taxing)

of different levels of government. While there aremerits to subsidiarity, there are many challengingimplications in involved in its implementation. The

temporal and geographic scales within which urbanecosystems operate demand integrated multiscaledgovernance (at best) and coordination among scalesof governance for problem solving (at least).

The numbers of those implicated in urban activitiesand their impacts on the environment is increasing

and becoming more diverse. The set of actorsincludes those from government, nongovernmentalorganisations, and the private sector. Urbangovernments are playing new roles as facilitatorsof private investment in new sectors such as waterand waste management as well as dealing with anincreased role for nongovernmental organisations.While these developments also pose challenges,they present opportunities for engaging a largerand crosssectoral set of actors to solve problems.

The ecosystem approach should include options fornew management systems. In this recommendation,

there are at least three components. The rst is theprovision of information (in terms of the integrationof many different forms), the second is the inclusionof diverse actors and voices, and the third is the wayin which information translates into action.

Information from all sources is critical to arriving ateffective ecosystem management strategies. Betterknowledge of urban ecosystem functions and theimpacts of human use are desirable. All relevantinformation from any concerned area should beshared with all stakeholders and actors. Assumptionsbehind proposed management decisions shouldbe made explicit and checked against availableknowledge and views of stakeholders. The relevantscale of impact must be considered in combinationwith the relevant set of actors. Locations of facilitiesthat are for the entire community should not be madeby the decisions and actions of actors whose interestis on smaller units.

Most problems of urban ecosystems are complex,with many interactions, sideeffects, andimplications, and therefore should involve thenecessary expertise and stakeholders at the local,national, regional, and international level, asappropriate. Where traditional divisions inhibit

coordination, temporary and exible governancearrangements may be helpful in dealing with specicissues in the city.

The ecosystem approach must promote policiesand planning targets that are accompanied bynancial backing and managerial support to ensureimplementation. Projects should be structured toattract adequate nancing though public, private,and user funding.

4.5 Tools and Methods

To implement the ecosystem approach new toolsand methods must be generated. These tools might


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include GIS software, scenario building, and neweconomic valuation techniques. What is importantis to include a variety of techniques from variousdisciplines. As scientic knowledge is only one formof knowing, planners should include an examinationof other forms, such as traditional knowledge,whenever possible.

There is no single tool or method that can deal withthe ecosystem approach. Uptodate tools includeGIS, strategic environmental assessment (SEA), andlifecycle analysis (LCA), among others. Potentialpitfalls of these approaches are data availability,time, and money since applying sophisticatedtools often requires signicant amount of data andinformation and substantial time and investmentfor preparation. The tools are undoubtedly powerfulbut there are cases where such analysis can beomitted. Similarly, some tools cannot be applied asthey are now, and need modication to suit specic

conditions of different areas. Moreover, there areclear limitations associated with the application ofthese tools to crossdisciplinary studies, particularly ifthey demand the integration of the interdisciplinaryresearches into a single model to maintain scienticrigor and validity.

As the ecosystem approach is a holistic approach inenvironmental management that does not covera single discipline, but integrates many disciplinessuch as social, biological, physical, and engineeringsciences. Each discipline required different tools andmethods to conduct research in their respective eld.It is possible to shortlist several modern tools ormethods based on the policy objectives.

4.6 Tradeoffs and Synergies

The ecosystem approach brings a systemic, holisticapproach to an extremely complex set of interrelationships. The goal of the approach is to providegreater clarity and an expanded set of factors interms of what might be lost or gained in makingdecisions. Therefore tradeoffs and wider gains mustbe articulated as clearly as possible. An integratedurban ecosystem approach will involve generating

enough information for policy makers such thattradeoffs and synergies between various optionsin terms of social, economic and ecological values,can be addressed at various spatial, temporal, andmanagement scales.


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5 Conclusions and Next Steps

An ecosystems approach to urban policy developmentand management is an emerging and promising

approach. This evolution of this approach can bedivided into two components. First is the systems

element. By itself, the systems approach tounderstanding and managing cities has had aconsiderable impact, there have been shortcomings,not the least of which was the exclusion of biologicaleffects in city management and an over emphasison managerial control. The second element is theperspective of the city as a natural entity. Groupsof scholars and practitioners that have emphasized

this approach have created a variety of alternativevisions. Work on the ecosystem approach thatincludes both human (social and political) factorsand biophysical factors is the most promising.Among these the human ecosystem framework (HEF)provides the basis for applying the approach to cities.

From this work we have distilled a series ofcharacteristics, which could frame a discussionfor developing an ecosystems approach for urbanmanagement. We hope that these deningcharacteristics will promote discussion amongour colleagues. They have already presentedopportunities to develop agenda for further workfor the institute.

Taking the above into account, UNU/IAS iscontemplating a twopronged approach to exploringthe potential of the ecosystems approach to urban

management. First, through capacity developmentexercises with city managers, the Institute, incollaboration with its partner will attempt to developpractical guidelines to apply ecosystems approach inthe eld.

Second, the Institute will carry out a research projectthat explores both the promises and challenges ofusing the approach. This research will include casestudies that examine the applicability of the approachas well as theoretical studies.

It is our hope that this work will lead to pilot project(s)

that result in the development plans, which apply theecosystems approach in specic locations. All theseactivities will include preparation of materials forboth training the dissemination of research results.


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United Nations University Global Reach

Programmes at UNU Centre, Tokyo, JapanPeace and Governance Programme (Vice-RectorP&[email protected])Environment and Sustainable Development Programme ([email protected])Capacity Development and Fellowships ([email protected])

UNU Research and Training Centres or Programmes (RTC/Ps)UNU Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU/IAS), Tokyo, JapanFocus: strategic approaches to sustainable developmentEmail [email protected], URL http://www.ias.unu.edu

UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU/WIDER), Helsinki, FinlandFocus: development economicsEmail [email protected], URL http://www.wider.unu.edu

UNU Institute for New Technologies (UNU/INTECH), Maastricht, The NetherlandsFocus: socio-economic impacts of new technologies

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UNU Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU/INRA), Accra, GhanaFocus: natural resources managementEmail [email protected], URL http://www.unu.edu/inra

UNU International Institute for Software Technology (UNU/IIST), Macau, ChinaFocus: software technologies for developmentEmail [email protected], URL http://www.iist.unu.edu

UNU Programme for Biotechnology in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNU/BIOLAC) , Caracas, VenezuelaFocus: biotechnology and societyEmail [email protected], URL http://www.unu.edu/capacitybuilding/Pg_biolac/pg.html

UNU Leadership Academy (UNU/LA), Amman, JordanFocus: leadership developmentEmail [email protected], URL http://www.unu.edu/la

UNU International Network on Water, Environment and Health (UNU/INWEH) , Hamilton, CanadaFocus: water, environment and human healthEmail [email protected], URL http://www.inweh.unu.edu

UNU Programme for Comparative Regional Integration Studies, Bruges, BelgiumFocus: local/global governance and regional integrationEmail [email protected], URL http://www.cris.unu.edu

UNU Food and Nutrition Programme for Human and Social Development, Cornell University, USA

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UNU Geothermal Training Programme (UNU/GTP), Reykjavk, IcelandFocus: geothermal research, exploration and developmentEmail [email protected], URL http://www.os.is/unugtp/

UNU Fisheries Training Programme (UNU/FTP), Reykjavk, IcelandFocus: postgraduate sheries research and developmentEmail [email protected], URL http://www.unu.edu/iceland/sheries/sheries.html

Centre for International Conict Research (INCORE), Londonderry, United KingdomFocus: ethnic, political and religious conicts

Email [email protected], URL http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk


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United Nations University

Institute of Advanced Studies

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Email [email protected]

URL http://www.ias.unu.edu

The Institute of Advanced Studies of United Nations University(UNU/IAS) was inaugurated in April 1996. We conduct research,postgraduate education, and capacity development, bothin-house and in cooperation with an interactive networkof academic institutions and international organisations.

The thematic direction of our research concerns the interactionof social and natural systems. Thus, our research combinesthe social sciences (law, economics, politics, and policy) withsome of the physical and life sciences (genetics, ecology, and

biology) at both theoretical and applied levels, and is aimedat the development of informed policymaking to addressglobal concerns.

The current research agenda focus on strategic paths tosustainable development, and under this broad theme,our projects examine issues of biodiplomacy, sustainabledevelopment governance, urban ecosystems, science andtechnology policy options for developing and least developedcountries, and education and sustainable development.

defining an ecosystem approach to urban management and policy development

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