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60 | Solutions | November-December 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org
Feature
Rob McDonald, Burak Guneralp,
Wayne Zipperer, and Peter Marcotullio
The Future of Global
Urbanization and
the Environment
In Brief
Using findings of the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook (CBO), we propose three specific solutions to mitigate the loss of
ecosystem services and biodiversity in our urban and urbanizing landscapes. The CBO identified continued loss of criti-
cal habitats for biodiversity conservation and degradation of many important ecosystem services due to urbanization.
The fact that most ecosystem services and biodiversity itself are common goods facilitates this loss and degradation.
To address this issue, a fundamental solution can be giving value to ecosystem services and biodiversity in the market-
place and firmly incorporating them in urban planning processes.
This solution can be achieved with a three-pronged approach: (1) ecosystem services can be conceived as a utility
similar to the provision of electricity and water, and cities can structure their governance and urban planning processes
to ensure adequate ecosystem service provision; (2) the local level solutions, especially in places where urban expansion
encroaches upon biodiversity hotspots, can go a long way in the conservation of biodiversity at the global level; and (3)
the well-being of biodiversity and the sustainability of ecosystem services in the face of humanity’s massive urbanization
require coordination by governments at all levels. Thus, as the world becomes ever more urban, urban decision-makers
and citizens will need to not only re-connect to nature, but also adopt policies to integrate nature into our daily lives.
sage_solar
Giving value to ecosystem services would gain them greater consideration in urban planning, an integral step in conserving biodiversity and ecosystems in
the face of widespread urbanization.
www.thesolutionsjournal.org | November-December 2014 | Solutions | 61
Arecent global assessment by
hundreds of scientists, the
Cities and Biodiversity Outlook
(CBO) examined how the coming mas-
sive global urban growth will interact
with the natural world.1 By 2030, there
will be almost 2 billion new urban resi-
dents, and this rapid urban growth has
significant implications for the fate of
human society and the natural world.
With one of the sponsor organizations
being the Secretariat of the Convention
on Biological Diversity (CBD), it is not
surprising that the CBO had a strong
focus on how urban growth directly
and indirectly affected ecosystem
services and biodiversity. The CBO
also had a strong focus on how cities
depend on ecosystem services, the ben-
efits to human well-being provided by
nature, and how that dependence will
change with rapid urban growth in the
coming decades. The report highlights
the resulting synergistic effects on
ecosystem services and biodiversity of
climate change, projected growth of
human population in cities, and urban
land-use change. In this paper, we not
only highlight a few key findings of the
CBO, but also present the fundamental
challenges that urban growth poses for
ecosystem services and biodiversity,
potential solutions to address these
fundamental challenges, and three
specific mechanisms that can help
cities harmonize their relationship to
ecosystem services and biodiversity.
The Fundamental Problem
The CBO found continued degradation
of many important ecosystem services
upon which urban dwellers depend.
While there are many different causes
of this degradation of service, includ-
ing loss of habitat, climate change, and
regulatory and institutional barriers,
one fundamental underlying problem
was identified in several of the chapters
of the CBO: many ecosystem services,
in particular regulatory and cultural
services,2 are common or public goods.
That is, these ecosystem services are
non-excludable goods, in that the
benefits they provide are not easily
limited to only those who can pay for
them, but are freely available to a large
set of people.3 For instance, a large for-
ested patch in an urban region helps to
maintain and regulate air quality and
temperature locally and potentially
regionally, yet these benefits are avail-
able to essentially all those near the
forested patch, regardless of whether
they have paid for their provision.
Both empirical evidence and envi-
ronmental economic theory suggest
that common and public goods are
generally underprovided by free mar-
kets—a phenomenon called ‘market
failure’. Since any actions individuals
might take that increase ecosystem
service provision would benefit people
who do not have to pay to receive
the benefit, there is little financial
incentive for individuals to consider
ecosystem services in their decisions.
For similar reasons, ecosystem services
are often not given adequate weight
during policy decision-making pro-
cesses, although the mandate of some
policy makers to consider the greater
good can sometimes allow some con-
sideration of ecosystem services. For
example, by converting forested lands
into new residential areas, the prop-
erty developers may gain financially
off this conversion, but other people
in the city at large may lose because
of the loss of ecosystem services once
forests disappear. Such actions can also
lead to intergenerational equity chal-
lenges in terms of the benefits derived
from the ecosystem services. Property
developers have no economic incen-
tive to consider these broader social
impacts. Such disconnect is the funda-
mental problem causing widespread
degradation and loss of ecosystem
services upon which humans depend.
One very important ecosystem
service affected by development is
freshwater provision.4 Urban areas
depend on upstream natural habitat
for regulating water flows, and impact
freshwater provisions to downstream
communities. Consider the example
of the expanding city where forests
are replaced by residential areas. This
increase in the impermeable surface
area leads to increased volumes of
surface water runoff, which increases
the vulnerability to flooding of down-
stream communities. Urban landscapes
with 50 to 90 percent impervious cover
can lose 40 to 83 percent of rainfall to
surface runoff compared to 13 percent
in forested landscapes.5
Key Concepts
• An international team of more than 200
scientists conducted a global assessment
of urbanization and the environment,
called the City Biodiversity Outlook
(CBO), finding widespread degradation
of ecosystem service provision for
urban residents and a substantial loss of
biodiversity in urban and urbanizing areas
• The fundamental problem identified by the
CBO is that most ecosystem services and
the existence value of biodiversity are
non-market goods and are not adequately
considered in economic or policy
decisions
• In this paper, we argue that the
fundamental solutions to this problem are
to quantify the value of ecosystem ser-
vices for urbanites and to create policy
mechanisms that incorporate the value
of ecosystem services into economic and
policy decision-making. We present three
such potential policy mechanisms:
–Cities should consider ecosystem ser-
vices as a utility they supply to their
residents, on par with the provision
of electricity and water, and structure
their governance and urban plan-
ning processes to ensure adequate
ecosystem service provision
–As the vast majority of future
biodiversity lost due to urban growth
will be in a few hotspots in develop-
ing countries, local level solutions to
safeguard biodiversity in the face of
urban expansion would go a long way
in the conservation of biodiversity at
the global level
–The well-being of biodiversity and
sustainability of ecosystem services
in the face of humanity’s massive
urbanization require coordination by
governments across multiple scales
and jurisdictions
62 | Solutions | November-December 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org
Freshwater provision has signifi-
cant externalities, but also has some
characteristics of a private good. On
the one hand, urbanization affects
land cover which in turn affects the
quantity and quality of water available
for other users downstream. Unless
restricted by government policy or reg-
ulation, cities tend to degrade the water
quality of downstream water sources,
either through diffuse pollution (e.g.,
sedimentation from construction,
polluted stormwater runoff) or point
source pollution (e.g., wastewater
release). On the other hand, urban
areas require water. Water is directly
needed for human use, and supports a
variety of other secondary ecosystem
services (e.g., recreation, biodiversity,
transportation). Many cities go to great
lengths to safeguard their water source,
and have a direct financial stake in the
health of this water source.
Another example of market failure
is not adequately considering the
cultural ecosystem services provided
by the urban forest, especially parks,
during urban planning process. These
cultural services are vital for human
health and well-being, and include
recreational value, aesthetic benefits,
and benefits to human physical and
mental health. Since city environ-
ments can be stressful for inhabitants,
the recreational aspects of urban eco-
systems are among the highest valued
ecosystem services in cities. Parks,
forests, lakes, and rivers provide a
manifold of possibilities for recreation,
thereby enhancing human health and
well-being.6 Unfortunately, many of
these areas are lost or degraded during
urbanization, which could have been
prevented to some extent through an
integrated planning process.
The CBO also found continued loss
of biodiversity due to urbanization.
Although the CBO stressed that urban
areas continue to harbor important ele-
ments of biodiversity, the net impact of
urban growth globally is a loss of bio-
diversity. Much like the situation with
ecosystem services, the maintenance
of biodiversity is not adequately con-
sidered in the economic decisions of
individuals or in the policy decisions of
governments. Despite the considerable
importance of biodiversity, both for the
maintenance of ecosystem services and
for the value many people place on its
existence, it is generally afforded little
economic importance during decisions
of urban planning and growth.
Cities are often located in areas
of high biodiversity richness and
endemism (along coastlines, some
islands, and major river systems), and
therefore, have a significant direct
impact on biodiversity.7 Examples
of biodiversity hotspots include the
Mediterranean Basin, Atlantic Forest,
California Floristic Province, and Indo-
Burma and Sundaland which contain
nearly all Southeastern Asian urban
lands (27, 000 km2). Direct impact
includes habitat loss, fragmentation
and degradation of remaining blocks
of natural habitats, the increase in
non-native invasive species, and the
loss of sensitive indigenous species.
Moreover, the urban land in biodiver-
sity hotspots have already affected
ecoregions that contain 10 percent
Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2012)
The City Biodiversity Outlook presents a global assessment of urbanization and the environment.
www.thesolutionsjournal.org | November-December 2014 | Solutions | 63
of terrestrial vertebrates,8 and future
urban area in hotspots is forecast to
increase by about four times globally
from 2000 to 2030.9
Protected areas (PAs) have been
one of the main tools used to limit
biodiversity loss due to habitat con-
version. Urban expansion is expected
to continue near PAs, at least at the
same pace as elsewhere across most
of the world.10 In fact, the amount of
urban land near PAs is expected to
increase around the world, on average,
by more than three times between
2000 and 2030 (from 450,000 km2
circa 2000), with China developing
the most urban land within 50 km of
its PAs by 2030. The largest propor-
tional change, however, will likely be
in Mid-Latitudinal Africa where urban
land near PAs is estimated to increase
15 to 25 times by 2030.
The CBO stresses, however, that
significant biodiversity remains in
urban areas globally. Williams et
al. (2009) identified three sources
of species in urban landscapes: (1)
native species originating in the area
itself; (2) native species occurring
regionally; and (3) non-native species
introduced by humans or naturalized
in the region. Changes in any of them
may affect species diversity in a city.
Analyses of long-term species records
provide insights into how these
sources change, with species richness
in group 1 tending to decline and
species richness in groups 2 and 3
often increasing, leading to biotic
homogenization.11 Although the
general pattern is of a decline in
native-species richness, it can still
comprise 50 to 70 percent of total
species richness in a city.12
Finally, the CBO stressed that
urbanization is a complex phenom-
enon tightly linked to a number of
other development processes. It is
counterproductive for policymakers to
consider urbanization solely as a prob-
lem, since it is an unavoidable part of
economic development and popula-
tion growth. A more useful way to
think about global urbanization is as
both a challenge to the sustainability
of our planet’s natural systems and as
a tremendous opportunity to change
how cities structure and function.13
The Fundamental Solution
If the fundamental environmental
problem with urbanization is that
most ecosystem services and biodi-
versity are common or public goods
that are not adequately considered
in economic or policy decisions,
what is the fundamental solution?
Here, we suggest that one part of
the solution must be giving value to
ecosystem services and biodiversity
in market decisions, as well as bring-
ing new regulatory mechanisms
and infrastructure systems in urban
governance for the efficient manage-
ment of ecosystem services and
conservation of biodiversity.
This overarching solution is so
general that it may seem obvious,
and there are of course myriad
specific ways that governments at
various levels (municipal, regional,
or national) can intervene to give
value to biodiversity and ecosystem
services. In this paper, we offer three
specific mechanisms towards reaching
the fundamental solution. While
our experience as lead editors shapes
our suggestions, these three specific
mechanisms are in no way exhaustive.
Other potential mechanisms exist,
and the mechanisms that are effective
in one city may not be effective in
other cities due to local ecological or
socioeconomic circumstances.
Treating Ecosystem Services
as an Urban Utility
Cities worldwide are structured to
have different departments or utili-
ties that provide key services to their
residents: clean water, electricity,
sanitation services, and many more.
These services are now generally either
directly provided by publicly owned
entities, or by private companies that
are employed by and strictly regulated
by the cities they serve. While it is easy
now for many urban residents to take
these publicly-guaranteed services for
granted, they have not always been
considered as an essential urban ser-
vice. For instance, water provision and
waste disposal have been at different
points in history seen as primarily the
responsibility of individual households,
only becoming a generally accepted
publicly-guaranteed service in the
19th century.14 Electricity provision
only came to be seen as a publicly-
guaranteed service in the 20th century,
and in recent decades, some cities have
begun to view cheap wireless internet
access as a similar common good they
can provide to their citizens.
We suggest that cities need to con-
sider the provision of key ecosystem
services on par with the other services
they supply to their citizens. Currently,
ecosystem services are considered
piecemeal by existing municipal
departments or agencies: the water
utility might think about hydrologic
regulating services upstream of
reservoirs, the parks department might
think about the recreational value of
open space, and the electricity provider
might try to promote shade trees to
reduce summer air-conditioning costs.
Certain ecosystem services lack any
advocates. For instance, few cities have
departments with institutional man-
dates to facilitate carbon sequestration.
Moreover, this piecemeal arrangement
means that it is difficult to fully
account for the multiple benefits that
natural habitats provide in a city or
region. For instance, a water utility may
consider source watershed protection
for its benefits to raw water quality, but
will tend to consider any recreational
benefits that might occur with conser-
vation as incidental to its mission.
What if public utilities engage
in payments for ecosystem services
(PES)? This requires a change in mind-
set, but also in pricing and related
regulatory mechanisms of utilities.
Unfortunately, there is currently little
research on how this may work in
64 | Solutions | November-December 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org
practice.15 One example is incentives
put in place for public water utility
districts in California to participate in
innovative finance mechanisms.16 A
component of this initiative involves
paying landowners upstream to
better manage their lands, avoiding
increases in pollutant loads caused
by land change. However, pricing
mechanisms such as PES are only part
of the solution and may need to be
replaced or complemented with other
mechanisms depending on the specific
ecosystem-service bundle in question.
Moreover, the whole infrastructure
network upon which utilities for deliv-
ering their services may need to be
reformed to reflect the type of ecosys-
tem services. For instance, the concept
of green infrastructure, also called
integrated infrastructure, envisions
a more landscape-oriented approach
that integrates various resource flows
and is a promising alternative to
prevailing paradigm in infrastructure
construction and management.17
Some cities are already beginning
to think in a more integrated fashion
by having sustainability offices that
write sustainability plans for the city.
These plans are supposed to have
integrated environmental goals, and
can serve to coordinate the actions of
different urban agencies so that they
provide maximum benefit for citizens.
However, sustainability offices often
have limited budgets and resources,
and do not have any direct authority
over the agencies whose actions the
sustainability plan is supposed to
coordinate. What would it look like
if the sustainability office in a city
had as its mission to provide the full
spectrum of ecosystem services to
its citizens, and managed the budget
and resources that were to create the
green infrastructure to provide those
ecosystem services?
Minimizing habitat and biodiver-
sity loss and limiting degradation of
ecosystem services also require cities
to integrate ecological knowledge
into their urban planning practices.18
Specifically, urban planning practices
need to become more attuned to
conservation of biodiversity and
preservation of ecosystem services
Casey Eisenreich
Residents enjoy Boston Common on a spring day. Urban parks have recreational and aesthetic value, and contribute positively to the mental and physical
health of urban dwellers.
www.thesolutionsjournal.org | November-December 2014 | Solutions | 65
that are of critical importance for the
inhabitants of the urban areas.19,20
In this respect, the dissemination of
information and connection of science
to practitioners is an important aspect
of formulating sound urbanization
strategies that explicitly acknowledge
and consider conservation of biodi-
versity. However, one of the critical
prerequisites to ensure this integration
is that urban planners be equipped
with the requisite institutional capac-
ity to integrate policies and manage
natural resources directly.21,22
Novel ecosystems, communities
composed of both native and non-
natives species, which occur often on
sites previously cleared because of
anthropogenic activities, may give us
insights into how future ecosystems in
urban landscapes may function. Often
these areas are managed with inten-
tion to be restored to a state reflecting
conditions prior to urbanization. This
is often a futile attempt; instead, these
novel ecosystems should be viewed
positively for their contributions to
society rather than being treated as
inferior to natural communities. In
fact, novel ecosystems are critical
ecological areas in both shrinking and
expanding cities, where these areas
can be managed to provide a variety of
ecosystem services, including water,
fuel, and food, as well as recreation.
Local Efforts to Protect
Biodiversity Hotspots under
Urbanization Pressure
As discussed above, the biodiversity
impact of cities tends to be concen-
trated in particular cities located in
high biodiversity areas. Another way
to measure the biodiversity impacts of
cities is to calculate for the ecoregions
of the world the expected number
of endemic vertebrate species that
might be lost due to urbanization
(Figure 1). The total number of spe-
cies lost depends on the amount of
urban growth (and hence habitat loss)
expected between 2000 and 2030,
the endemic species richness, and
the species area curve assumed. In
this simple case, we assume a linear
species-area curve, although in actual-
ity the shape of the curve will vary
among taxa and geographic region.
Note that regardless of the species
area curve that is assumed, the spatial
concentration of endemic richness and
urban growth implies that endemic
species loss is highly concentrated.
The 25 most threatened ecoregions,
3 percent of all ecoregions globally,
account for 50 percent of the expected
loss. Urban growth in just 10 percent
of all ecoregions accounts for 78 per-
cent of the expected loss. Thus, actions
to maintain biodiversity in a relatively
small number of ecoregions could
have a disproportionately large benefit
in terms of avoiding biodiversity loss
for urbanization.
Of the actions proposed to ame-
liorate urban effects on biodiversity,
setting aside large parcels of native
habitats in those parts of the biodi-
versity hotspots facing urbanization
pressure may provide the best oppor-
tunity for regional floral and faunal
species to persist. These protected
areas would need to be large enough
to contain the spectrum of natural dis-
turbances as well as native habitats.
With land conservation, a number of
landscape designs are possible. For
instance, one design for large parcels
would make these areas composed
of multiple-utilization zones.23 The
interior zone would be road-free and
managed to conserve native flora and
fauna. By comparison, the perimeter
would serve as a buffer that is used for
multiple benefits and linked to other
areas. An example would be the Tijuca
Forest in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Large
parcels can, to some extent, buffer
local climatic changes and contain
more individuals of a single species,
thus enhancing its genetic breadth.
Even these large areas, however, will
not be immune to human intrusions;
natural resource managers must
also continually adapt to changing
circumstances.
The conservation of large parcels
of natural habitats brings into play
debates over whether we should
preserve large versus numerous small
areas of native habitats. With climate
change and the rapid changes brought
about by urban land-use conversion as
well as intensive utilization by rural
populations, larger areas may be able to
buffer against better than smaller sites,
especially for native faunal species.
Nonetheless, smaller protected areas
can also play a critical role for human
use by maximizing ecosystem services
for water, fuel, and food to minimize
intrusions into the larger areas. In
addition, both large and small parcels
could be used to enhance species migra-
tion across inhospitable habitats, thus
facilitating species relocation.
International Coordination for
Urban Sustainability
Solutions to reconcile the ongoing
urbanization and conservation require
policies that work in harmony across
scales, from local to regional to global,
and across political jurisdictions.
In particular, establishing effective
biodiversity conservation strategies in
regions that are expected to undergo
significant urban expansion require
coordinated efforts among multiple
cities, provinces, and even countries.
Such coordination, however, has
been hard to achieve even among
conservation bodies under existing
regional and global governance
mechanisms.24 The recently formed
Intergovernmental Platform on
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
(IPBES: www.ipbes.net) aims to
remedy this lack of coordination
by, among other things, conducting
periodic sub-regional, regional, and
global assessments on the state of the
planet’s biodiversity, its ecosystems,
and the essential services they provide
to society.25 Established in April 2012,
the IPBES will act as an independent
intergovernmental body, much like
the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) and will be
66 | Solutions | November-December 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org
open to all member countries of the
United Nations. Clearly, the impacts
of urbanization on biodiversity are
critical enough to be included in these
assessments. In this vein, the CBO—as
endorsed by the CBD—is the first ever
comprehensive assessment of the
interaction of cities and biodiversity
and ecosystem services.
However, many biodiversity
hotspots threatened by urban growth
are located in developing countries,
which may have limited financial
resources to devote to land protec-
tion. Moreover, since the attention of
municipal governments in developing
countries is often understandably
focused on things like providing clean
drinking water and sanitation to
their burgeoning urban population,
biodiversity protection may not be
seen as a municipal priority. However,
globally, there is substantial interest in
preventing massive biodiversity loss
in these biodiversity hotspots that face
continuing urbanization. We suggest
that this spatial disconnect between
those making the decisions in cities in
biodiversity hotspots and those who
care about the biodiversity losses can
be overcome by a global effort to pro-
tect these biodiversity hotspots from
further urban encroachment. This
effort must include focusing conserva-
tion funding from organizations and
governments in the developed world to
these hotspots in the developing world.
Several biodiversity hotspots and,
in some cases, protected areas, span
across national borders. In such cases,
challenges posed by urbanization to
biodiversity conservation and ecosys-
tem service preservation cannot solely
be met by local-level solutions; they
require policy responses on a broader
scale, and thus call for appropriate
strategies with sufficient breadth
to be developed at the national and
international levels. The implications
of urbanization in such biodiversity
hotspots and protected areas for
their biodiversity and ecosystem
functioning can be more accurately
Courtesy of the authors
Figure 1: Expected endemic vertebrate species lost due to urban area expansion. The number of
species lost depends upon the amount of urban growth expected between 2000 and 2030, the endemic
species richness, and the species area curve assumed. The 25 most threatened ecoregions are
shown with red dots (A). The majority of species loss due to urbanization will be in a small fraction of
ecoregions (B). See text for details.
A
Expected endemic loss
Most threatened ecoregions
Prop. of ecoregions with greatest species loss
0.0
0100 200 300 400 500 600
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1. 0
Endemic species loss
< 1
2-4 8-16
1-2
4-8 > 16
B
www.thesolutionsjournal.org | November-December 2014 | Solutions | 67
assessed through trans-border regional
cooperation between the countries
involved.26 Two examples are the
Indo-Burma and Himalaya hotspots,
which are undergoing rapid urbaniza-
tion,27 and span multiple jurisdictions
within and among countries. There
have been developments towards
such cooperation between China and
India in the region though obstacles
remain.28 A promising initiative of
such regional cooperation involves
the Mediterranean Basin hotspot,
arguably the most human-modified
of all hotspots. MediverCities, an
initiative in the making, aims to
create a network of cities focused on
biodiversity around the Mediterranean
Basin.29 Though not established to
address urban-related biodiversity
concerns, the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) Centre for
Biodiversity is another example of
regional cooperation that can readily
serve as a platform for the coordina-
tion of urbanization and biodiversity
conservation in Southeast Asia.
Notwithstanding uncertainties
inevitable in any study on the future
trends, it is increasingly clear that
urbanization will continue to impact
biodiversity and ecosystem services
around the world. It is also clear that
most of these impacts will take place
in the developing world with limited
means to address each and every
challenge urbanization presents. We
put forward three potential solutions
to address this challenge: (1) treat-
ing ecosystem services as an urban
utility; (2) local efforts to protect
biodiversity hotspots under urbaniza-
tion pressure; and (3) international
coordination for urban sustainability.
Each of these solutions is currently
being experimented with in different
locations with varying levels of suc-
cess. It is clear that as urbanization
increases, however, urban decision
makers and citizens will need to not
only re-connect to nature, but adopt
policies to integrate nature into our
daily lives.
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68 | Solutions | November-December 2014 | www.thesolutionsjournal.org
Rubem Porto Jr.
Preserving large parcels of native habitats in areas under urban pressure would protect regional biodiversity. An existing example is the Tijuca Forest in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
www.thesolutionsjournal.org | November-December 2014 | Solutions | 69
Rubem Porto Jr.
Preserving large parcels of native habitats in areas under urban pressure would protect regional biodiversity. An existing example is the Tijuca Forest in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
