Abstract
The chapter highlights the potential of nature in cities in mitigating and adapting to climate change. The concept of nature-based solution (NBS) has gained more and more attention in relation to its capacity to provide a wide array of ecosystem services (ES) in different contexts, including urban areas. NBS can address several urban challenges, as ecosystems in healthy condition provide a variety of functions and deliver multiple services, so contributing to climate commitments and more in general to social welfare.
Targeted policies and instruments can be adopted by local governments to foster the implementation of NBS in urban areas to enhance resilience and mitigate emissions. In particular, payments for ecosystem services (PES) can protect and enhance natural assets connecting users and providers of ES through voluntary or regulated transaction schemes. Specific urban PES case studies are analyzed taking into account the stakeholders engaged, the revenues generated, the ES generated and the transaction mechanisms. Results show that PES have proven to be effective in investing and managing urban NBS. The complexity of urban environments and the interactions between many ES requires to adequately value the benefits generated.
Keywords
- Nature-based solutions
- Urban climate policies
- Climate change mitigation
- Climate change adaptation
- Ecosystem services
- Payment for ecosystem services
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The MA (MA 2005) includes the “supporting services” category that in CICES is mostly integrated in “maintenance services.” In fact, in literature, supporting services are defined as intermediate ES. Intermediate ES are ES with no direct benefits to human well-being and “consist of the biophysical structures and processes that maintain ecosystems in a favorable state for the provision of final ES” such as regulating ES (Lamonthe and Sutherland 2018).
- 3.
The study estimates that global forest were a net carbon sink of − 7.6 ± 49 GtCO2e yr−1, reflecting a balance between gross carbon removals (−15.6 ± 49 GtCO2e yr−1) and gross emissions from deforestation and other disturbances (8.1 ± 2.5 GtCO2e yr−1).
- 4.
- 5.
A private good is excludable, i.e., its owners can exercise private property rights, preventing those who have not paid for it from using the good or consuming its benefits; and rivalrous, i.e., consumption by one necessarily prevents that of another. A public good is non-excludable, non-rivalrous, and open to all in its consumption (clean air, soil water storage that yields flood control and beautiful views over a landscape). A toll good is excludable, but non-rivalrous (such as access to private parks). A common pool resource is rival and non-excludable (such as fish stocks in an ocean)
- 6.
The review has been performed by using Scopus. The keywords used for the research are: urban, PES, stewardship and ecosystems voluntary agreements. 63 papers have been analyzed but only few of them are focused on the implementation of PES schemes at the urban scale. The case studies have been selected based on two criteria: (i) involvement of local stakeholders in the PES scheme and (ii) ES sold generate direct impacts at the urban scale.
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Croci, E., Lucchitta, B. (2022). Climate Change and Urban Nature: Impacts and Policies at the Urban Level. In: Kim, KG., Thioye, M. (eds) Planning Climate Smart and Wise Cities. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80165-6_3
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