* by: Sofia Lorena Mateus Garcia
Many times we do not realize the ecosystems that we have in our cities, so much so that we do not even know which ecosystems can be considered urban. Well, there are cases in which it is easy to identify this type of ecosystem, such as a wetland or a forest, but the urban ecosystem is not defined by its physical characteristics, but by its functionality or the services it provides within the city. This is how a wetland helps regulate floods or severe droughts caused by climate change, or the forest helps reduce the amount of CO2 emitted by cars, public transport and industry, among others.
But when referring to urban ecosystems, we speak then not only of the famous «green areas», but also of the «blue areas»; That’s right, rivers are also part of urban ecosystems. Currently, seven types of urban ecosystems have been identified: trees that are located on the street, parks, forests, crops, wetlands, lakes and streams. These ecosystems provide a wide variety of ecosystem services that have a great impact on the quality of life of people in the city, and for this reason these ecosystems must be included in urban planning.
What are the benefits provided by this type of ecosystem?
Some ecosystems provide health benefits, such as preventing respiratory diseases, cancer or stress; others provide a recreation service such as ecological walks and others provide environmental solutions to prevent and mitigate the negative effects of our actions, such as the uncontrolled increase in temperature. For this reason, it is extremely important to include adaptation and mitigation strategies based on ecosystems in Land Management Plans that seek not only economic development but also environmental development, the latter understood as the creation, conservation, and preservation of important ecosystems for maintain biological connectivity in the city and thus generate a balance between human beings and the environment, which ultimately is what is desired with the creation of the Aichi Targets ratified in the Decade of Biodiversity in 2011 in Nagoya, Japan, by the Convention on Biological Diversity –CBD– and the countries that currently comprise it.
But urban ecosystems not only provide ecosystem services, they also help reduce city noise and improve air quality, so this type of ecosystem becomes strategic when proposing solutions to more local or specific problems that arise. currently present in the cities. However, the zones or areas with the highest economic income are those with the greatest access to green areas. This is how many ecosystem services have been threatened due to the deterioration of ecosystems as a result of the demographic growth model*.
What should we do?
As a reflection, we should then change the way we are planning the city, to be more inclusive of biodiversity and thus mitigate the negative effects not only of climate change, but of our actions. In the same way, it is necessary not to imitate but to adopt urban planning measures developed in other countries, in order to improve the quality of life of people regardless of their social class.
Finally, the fauna will benefit from the conservation of urban ecosystems: an area with a great variety of species can have a considerable number of ecological niches and thus increase biodiversity, which demands the permanence of ecological connectivity within and outside the urban area.
Sources
* Per Bolund and Sven Hunhammar. Ecosystem services in urban areas. Stockholm, Stockholm Environment Institute, 1999.
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