Based on nature, enabled by social-ecological-technological context: deriving benefit from urban green and blue infrastructure

• Published in: Ecology and society Vol. 27; no. 4; p. 18
• Main Authors: Andersson, Erik, Haase, Dagmar, Kronenberg, Jakub, Langemeyer, Johannes, Mascarenhas, André, Wolff, Manuel, Elmqvist, Thomas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ottawa Resilience Alliance 01.12.2022
• Subjects: Benefits; Biodiversity; Blue-green infrastructure; Case studies; Climate change; Distribution; Ecosystems; Green infrastructure; Heat waves; Infrastructure; Land tenure; Nature conservation; Planning; Quality of life; Resilience; Social justice; Urban areas; Urban population
• DOI: 10.5751/ES-13580-270418
• ISSN: 1708-3087

In this vein, the concept “nature-based solutions,” pioneered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN 2012), has challenged the conventional engineering and technological approach to build resilience to urban hazards such as flooding and heat waves (European Commission 2014) by ecosystem-based “actions” (United Nations 2022). The global interest in urban resilience and quality of life, urban GBI, nature-based solutions, environmental and social justice, and many more fields of inquiry has resulted in an increasingly rich toolbox of methods, evaluation frameworks, indicators, and critical perspectives (e.g., McPhearson et al. 2016, Biernacka and Kronenberg 2018, Wolff and Haase 2019, Langemeyer and Connolly 2020). Taking a social-ecological-technological systems approach to GBI and the benefits urban residents receive from it, we showcase three critical factors (filters) that influence the realization and distribution of benefits from GBI: infrastructures (composition and configuration of the urban physical landscape, integration of GBI and grey-built infrastructure); institutions (land tenure, rights, rules, and norms); and user perceptions and capacities (such as people’s diverse individual preferences and shared or conflicting values; Andersson et al. 2019, 2021a). At the core, this means that variation in terms of GBI availability does not translate to a matching distribution of benefits, which are constrained or enabled by additional factors beyond GBI distribution. [...]contextualized, systemic, multi-sector, and multi-actor strategies for GBI planning are needed to better account for other-than-physical constraints, user perspectives, and diversity among users.