Cathy Wilkinson’s research while affiliated with Stockholm University and other places

Cities and towns have become increasingly interested in building resilience to cope with surprises, however, how to do this is often unclear. We evaluated the ability of the Resilience Assessment Workbook to help urban areas incorporate resilience thinking into their planning practice by exploring how a resilience assessment process complemented existing planning in the local government of Eskilstuna, Sweden. We conducted this evaluation using participant observation, semistructured interviews, and a survey of the participants. Our findings show that the resilience assessment contributed to ongoing planning practices by addressing sustainability challenges that were not being addressed within the normal municipal planning or operations, such as local food security. It bridged longer term sustainable development and shorter term crisis management, allowing these two sectors to develop common strategies. Our study also highlighted that the Resilience Assessment Workbook could be made more useful by providing more guidance on how to practically deal with thresholds and trade-offs across scales, as well as on how to manage transdisciplinary learning processes. This is the first in-depth study of a resilience assessment process, and it demonstrates that the Resilience Assessment Workbook is useful for planning and that it merits further research and development.

In an increasingly urban world the battle for biodiversity hinges on how effectively cities are governed, and how responsive those who run cities are to trans-forming the urban system to embrace ecosystem integrity and restoration. This chapter sets out the nascent fi eld of urban biodiversity governance, and is the fi rst scientifi c publication to provide a synthesis review of the urban biodiversity and ecosystem services governance literature. It notes the recent expansion of an interdisciplinary global urban biodiversity and ecosystem services governance agenda, and that a sig-nifi cant body of academic material already has emerged. The chapter focuses on the challenges and opportunities of governing urban biodiversity and ecosystem services at the local, national, regional and global scales. It reveals that although overarching patterns of lack of political will, institutional capacity and knowledge are challenges to making an impact on ecological integrity, there are numerous sites of innovation, and solutions that have been put in practice. While the chapter fi nds patterns of challenges and opportunities experienced across cities covered in the literature, it is cautious about generalizations, as studies from Africa, South America and parts of Asia are largely lacking. Finally, the chapter considers what is required to improve governance of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services, and sets out a more inclu-sive research agenda to inform future global assessments of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services, with respect to local to global governance.

We are entering a new urban era in which the ecology of the planet as a whole is increasingly influenced by human activities (Ellis 2011; Steffen et al. 2011a, b; Folke et al. 2011). Cities have become a central nexus of the relationship between people and nature, both as crucial centres of demand of ecosystem services, and as sources of environmental impacts. Approximately 60 % of the urban land present in 2030 is forecast to be built in the period 2000–2030 (Chap. 21). Urbanization therefore presents challenges but also opportunities. In the next two to three decades, we have unprecedented chances to vastly improve global sustainability through designing systems for increased resource efficiency, as well as through exploring how cities can be responsible stewards of biodiversity and ecosystem services, both within and beyond city boundaries.

In an increasingly urban world the battle for biodiversity hinges on how effectively cities are governed, and how responsive those who run cities are to trans-forming the urban system to embrace ecosystem integrity and restoration. This chapter sets out the nascent fi eld of urban biodiversity governance, and is the fi rst scientifi c publication to provide a synthesis review of the urban biodiversity and ecosystem services governance literature. It notes the recent expansion of an interdisciplinary global urban biodiversity and ecosystem services governance agenda, and that a sig-nifi cant body of academic material already has emerged. The chapter focuses on the challenges and opportunities of governing urban biodiversity and ecosystem services at the local, national, regional and global scales. It reveals that although overarching patterns of lack of political will, institutional capacity and knowledge are challenges to making an impact on ecological integrity, there are numerous sites of innovation, and solutions that have been put in practice. While the chapter fi nds patterns of challenges and opportunities experienced across cities covered in the literature, it is cautious about generalizations, as studies from Africa, South America and parts of Asia are largely lacking. Finally, the chapter considers what is required to improve governance of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services, and sets out a more inclu-sive research agenda to inform future global assessments of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services, with respect to local to global governance.

The Arctic is changing rapidly in ways that fundamentally affect the region’s ecosystems and societies. The Arctic Resilience Report (ARR) uses resilience as an integrative concept and model to aid systemic understanding of the Arctic, including the cumulative impacts of a diverse suite of interconnected changes. This chapter describes the background and rationale for the ARR, including how it relates to other assessment processes. It explains the three aims of the ARR: to identify the potential for shocks and large shifts in ecosystems services that affect human well-being in the Arctic; to analyze how different drivers of change interact in ways that affect the ability of ecosystems and human populations to withstand shocks, adapt or transform; and to evaluate strategies for adaptation and transformation in the face of rapid change. Furthermore, the chapter provides a guide to the different project activities (integrative analysis, case studies, workshops, and capacity building), and sets this interim report into context of the project as a whole.

The Arctic is changing rapidly in ways that fundamentally affect the region’s ecosystems and societies. The Arctic Resilience Report (ARR) uses resilience as an integrative concept and model to aid systemic understanding of the Arctic, including the cumulative impacts of a diverse suite of interconnected changes. This chapter elaborates on the definition of resilience as a property of social-ecological systems. Resilience relates to their capacity to cope with disturbances and recover in such a way that they maintain their core function and identity. It also relates to the capacity to learn from and adapt to changing conditions and, when necessary, transform. Social-ecological systems are interwoven systems of human societies and ecosystems. The concept emphasizes that humans are part of nature and that these systems function in interdependent ways. A resilience assessment is an attempt to generate systemic and anticipatory knowledge about linked social-ecological systems to better inform decision-making. It emphasizes dynamic changes, including feedbacks and the risk of crossing critical thresholds. The chapter presents some of the central concepts in resilience thinking and the basic steps of a resilience assessment, and discusses how they are applied in the ARR. Furthermore, it highlights the normative aspects of assessing resilience.

Resilience is an increasingly important urban policy discourse that has been taken up at a rapid pace. Yet there is an apparent gap between the advocacy of social-ecological resilience in scientific literature and its take-up in policy discourse on the one hand, and the demonstrated capacity to govern for resilience in practice on the other. This paper explores this gap by developing a performative account of how social-ecological resilience is dealt with in practice through case study analysis of how protection of biodiversity was negotiated in response to Melbourne’s recent metropolitan planning initiative. It is suggested that a performative account expands the possible opportunities for governing for social-ecological resilience beyond the concept’s use as a metaphor, measurement, cognitive frame or programmatic statement of adaptive management/co-management and has the potential to emerge through what has been called the everyday ‘mangle of practice’ in response to social-ecological feedback inherent to policy processes.

This study examines how ecosystem services (ES) have been taken into account historically in strategic spatial plans in Melbourne and Stockholm through a comparative case study analysis of eight strategic spatial plans from 1929-2010. We investigated the types of ES taken into account, and how human-nature relations and the valuation and trade-off discussions regarding ES were framed. An ES coding protocol was developed that categorized and identified 39 ES drawing from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and other relevant literature. Only two of the 39 ES were addressed in every plan for both cities, namely freshwater and recreation. While the number of ES referred to in plans has generally increased over time, just under a third of ES in Melbourne and Stockholm were not addressed at all. References to individual ES showed little continuity over time. This variability reveals a time-scale mismatch that has been overlooked in the ES literature with potential urban policy implications. Despite considerable variation in ES addressed across the plans, there is a striking similar pattern in the total numbers of ES addressed over time in both cities. Plans for both cities showed a spike in the late 60s/early 70s, followed by a significant decline in the late 70s/early 80s with the highest number of ES addressed in the most recent plans. Furthermore, our analysis shows that strategic spatial plans generally demonstrate awareness that urban populations are dependent on ecosystems and this framing is an important part of the policy discourse. While specific monetary values were not placed on any ES in the plans, resolution of land-use conflicts requiring tradeoffs between ES and equity of distribution of ES is a central feature of most of the examined plans. We argue that longitudinal policy document analysis represents a useful complement to any attempt to improve understanding of the implications of and opportunities for operationalizing an ES approach in urban practice.