Greening the Cities with Biodiversity Indicators: Experience and Challenges from Japanese Cities with CBI

Abstract

For scientists, and other stakeholders in biodiversity monitoring systems (including AP-BON), capturing and understanding the status and trends of biodiversity and ecosystem services are a main focus. In the policy–science interface, communicating the complex results in comprehensible ways has been one of the key challenges. Development of indicators, maps, and other visualization tools is instrumental for identification, understanding, and support of the relevant policy decisions and processes.

In recent years, different cities have explored the development of such indicators in the urban context through negotiation. The development of indicators for urban ecosystems and biodiversity is shown here. The potential challenge of the application and use of such indicators in Japanese urban contexts is reviewed based on interviews and existing data. This chapter discusses and reviews the advantages and limitations of urban biodiversity indicators. The review focuses on applying the newly developed City Biodiversity Index (CBI), modifying the Singapore city biodiversity index adjusted so Japanese local municipalities can easily use it practically. The data are based on a research project implemented by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Japan (MLIT).

The existing literature points out that policy makers tend to emphasize ecosystem services for justification of their policies whereas scientists tend to focus on biodiversity. Kohsaka R (2010) Developing biodiversity indicators for cities: applying the DPSIR model to Nagoya and integrating social and ecological aspects. Ecol Res 25:925–936. Such twists are not a major problem if the status of biodiversity correlates with ecosystem services: this is true at a global or at a regional scale, but may be different at the local level. For example, the results of studies by the city of Nagoya indicate that ecosystem services correlate with the size of green or open spaces and not with the status of biodiversity. As such, applying biodiversity indicators at different scales can be a contentious issue. In addition, the integration of biodiversity relevant elements to ecological footprint maps is often discussed from the perspectives of local governments.