| 1. |
- Graham, Marnie, 1980-
(författare)
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Postcolonial Nature Conservation and Collaboration in Urban Protected Areas : Everyday relations at Macassar Dunes/Wolfgat reserves, Cape Town, South Africa
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Protected areas and nature conservation are profoundly shaped by Western ideas, and are embedded within powerful discourses and colonising practices. This thesis examines how colonialism and apartheid shape contemporary practices of nature conservation in Cape Town in South Africa - its institutions, geographies and peoples. Through three empirical studies of collaborative arrangements at the Macassar Dunes/Wolfgat nature reserves, the thesis develops a postcolonial nature conservation perspective to explore how colonial legacies live on, are contested and are re-shaped through everyday practices. Departing from Margaret Kovach’s Indigenous methodology, interviews and participatory observations are used to focus on collaborations as they occur in the everyday relations between people and nature, on-reserve and in the adjoining township areas. This shows how collaborative arrangements bring together participants across historical and social divides, including municipal nature conservators and residents from apartheid-era racially-segregated townships. Results illustrate how colonising legacies persist at wider and institutional levels through exclusionary conservation practices, a focus on biodiversity preservation, and through sustained racialised relations. Nonetheless, this thesis argues that some of the most transformative collaborative practices occur within ad hoc, informal, and unmanaged interactions, involving deeply interpersonal and ethically challenging situations. Through these interactions, conservators and community participants are re-defining what it means to be ‘postcolonial nature conservators’ in Cape Town. These everyday practices engage difficult and fraught steps that allow us to consider what it means to belong, to reconcile and to be responsible to nature and to each other in a postcolonial city. With its focus on collaboration as everyday relations, the thesis brings to the literature one of the first in-depth studies of urban nature conservation from the rapidly growing cities of the global South. It contributes critical analyses to emerging debates around nature conservation, urban nature, and colonial legacies and opens crucial questions around expertise, knowledge, informality and poverty.
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| 2. |
- Ernstson, Henrik, 1972-
(författare)
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In Rhizomia : Actors, Networks and Resilience in Urban Landscapes
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- With accelerating urbanization it is crucial to understand how urban ecosystems play a part in generating ecosystem services for urban dwellers, such as clean water, spaces for recreation, stress relief and improved air quality. An equally important question relate to who gets to enjoy these benefits, i.e. the distribution of ecosystem services, and how issues of power and equity influence the management of ecosystems. Through case studies from the urban landscape of Stockholm, this doctoral thesis engages with these perspectives through combining ecological theory with social theory, including social network analysis, actor-network theory and social movement theory. Strategies for how to improve urban ecosystem management are presented along with frameworks for how to analyze issues of power and equity in relation to natural resource management.Paper I shows that ecosystem management can be studied through analyzing the structure of social networks, i.e. the patterns of relations between agencies, stake-holders and user groups. Paper II and Paper III analyze, based on a network survey of 62 civil society organizations and in-depth interviews, a transformational process of how an urban local movement managed to protect a large urban green area from exploitation (The Stockholm National Urban Park). Paper IV discusses, based on several case studies from Stockholm, a conducive network structure for linking managers and user groups (e.g. allotment gardens, cemetery managers, and urban planners) across spatial ecological scales so as to improve urban green area management. Paper V presents a framework to analyze the social-ecological dynamics behind the generation and distribution of ecosystem services in urban landscapes.The thesis points towards the notion of "a social production of ecosystem services" and argues for deeper engagement with urban political ecology and critical geography to inform governance and collective action in relation to urban ecosystems.
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Goodness, Julie, 1985-
(författare)
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Shaping urban environments through human selection for plant traits
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Cities, as home to the majority of the world’s people, are significant sites for addressing challenges of achieving sustainability and securing human wellbeing. Urban environments are complex social-ecological systems, and meeting these challenges requires better understandings of the interactions of social and ecological elements. While there are many possible lenses through which to study social-ecological systems, this thesis examines the potential of a traits approach as one way to link ecological elements to social values. In ecology, functional traits have been defined as the characteristics of organisms that determine how organisms respond to the environment, and how they affect ecosystem processes, functions, and services. While functional traits have an established history of being linked to ecosystem processes and functions, they have only recently been extended to social aspects through the operationalization of the ecosystem services concept. As such, there is a distinct gap in identifying traits that are relevant and important to people. This interdisciplinary thesis attempts to bridge some of this lacuna, through empirical studies conducted in two cities: Cape Town, South Africa, and Stockholm, Sweden. Paper 1 addresses connections between traits and social values generally across cities through a literature review that examines connections between traits and cultural ecosystem services. Paper 2 explores preferences for traits and reasons for plant selection in the context of Cape Town. Paper 3 examines vegetation patterns and the expression of socially-valued traits across different land cover and land use classes in Stockholm. Paper 4 serves as a synthesis and comparison piece between Cape Town and Stockholm, and brings together social data on plant preferences and ecological data on plant patterns gathered in both locations under two different projects. Overall, responses from social surveys of preferences suggest that people actively select for a variety of different plant traits in the urban environment, and have a multitude of reasons for selecting the plants that they do, related both to qualities of the plants themselves, as well as broader external factors at multiple scales. Vegetation surveys of plant patterns suggest that trait preferences may be inscribed by people in the landscape, though to differing degrees. Using traits as an approach to link ecological elements to social values exhibits advantages in that traits are a spatial unit that is easily understood by citizens and environmental managers. However, it presents limitations in terms of scale, as traits are most useful in connecting to pin-point characteristics in the landscape, and social values associated with broader scales may be overlooked. Collectively, however, the papers in this thesis suggest that traits may serve as one useful approach for discerning human values in the urban landscape, and can be used as indicators of social function. In management applications, particular traits can be incorporated into landscaping interventions to provide for urban areas of greater social meaning. In this way, traits may serve as one tool within the evolving toolbox of social-ecological system study, and thus can contribute to future urban landscapes that exhibit robust social and ecological function.
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| 5. |
- Lundberg, Jakob, 1967-
(författare)
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Rethinking Urban Nature : Maintaining Capacity for Ecosystem Service Generation in a Human Dominated World
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Human action has transformed the major part of the Earth’s ecosystems. A growing human population puts further pressure on dynamic landscapes and resources. Crucially, for the first time in history, most people live in cities and environmental change has become truly global. Developed as part of the sub-global assessments of The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, this thesis examines anthropogenic effects on our life-support systems, and their altered capacity to generate goods and services of socio-economic value. It incorporates humans into the analysis of ecosystem dynamics and explores new ways to restore, create, and enhance ecosystem services in urban and other fragmented landscapes.The concept of mobile link organisms, i.e. key species that connect habitats and uphold their capacity to generate ecosystem services, is elaborated in relation to ecosystem dynamics and functioning. They are classified into resource, genetic and process linkers (Paper I). One such species, the Eurasian Jay (Garralus glandarius) and its role in oak tree regeneration across habitats, is empirically studied in a park of Stockholm (Paper II). The Jay is found to be pivotal in safeguarding the desired oak dominated landscape but its seed dispersal function requires active management, including of surrounding non-protected habitats. Potentially, a process oriented management approach could reduce costs and vulnerability to disturbances as well as preserve gene flow and diversity on a landscape level. Critical functions for ecosystem resilience performed by mobile links are likely to grow in importance as human impacts increase.The next focus is on ecosystems that are seldom considered in biological conservation and urban green space management. Ecosystem functions and services are identified in three types of culturally maintained land areas: golf courses, residential gardens, and allotments (Paper III). By GIS-assessment, it is established that they amount to 18% of the studied land area in metropolitan Stockholm, i.e. over twice the size of land set aside as protected areas. When these lands are taken into account, the cityscape appears to be greener than indicated by prevailing conservation maps. Focusing on the rapid expansion of golf courses in urban regions, the first major assessment of amphibian and macroinvertebrate fauna confined to golf courses is presented in Paper IV. Threatened species and those more sensitive to eutrophication, tended to be associated with golf ponds relative to ponds of other lands, including nature-protected areas. As to fauna, there was no significant difference between ponds of these different lands.Paper V further investigates culturally maintained areas such as sacred groves and military zones and considers them as under-explored assets for ecosystem and landscape management. They can perform essential complementary ecological functions and may even be instrumental in securing ecosystem services in fragmented landscapes. The social dimension of their sustenance is emphasized and it is argued that such lands and their steward groups should be explicitly incorporated into management through adaptive co-management schemes. Finally, the benefits of planting and managing an introduced alien cacti species (Opuntia spp.) in a highly fragmented landscape are examined by a case study from Madagascar (Paper VI). The cacti provide a range of ecosystem services vital to human subsistence in a location of scarce food and water supplies. Its extensive network of hedges reinforces landscape connectivity, e.g. exchanges between disconnected patches of sacred forest, rich in endemic plant species, and may support endemic wildlife. The thesis demonstrates the need for rethinking current conceptions in ecosystem management. Biotic linkages and the land uses researched may generate biodiversity benefits and ecosystem services rarely recognized in conservation, science or policy. The results imply that identifying and strengthening essential ecosystem processes could reduce the conflict between biodiversity conservation and societal development in urban and other human dominated landscapes. New avenues can be created that contribute to sustainable use of the human life-support systems.
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| 6. |
- Malinga, Rebecka, 1976-
(författare)
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Ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes : A study on farming and farmers in South Africa and Sweden
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Humanity is facing challenges of sustainably producing enough food for a growing population without further eroding the world’s ecosystems. Transformation of natural habitats into agriculture has resulted in opportunities for civilization, but has also led to land degradation and loss of biodiversity, threatening the generation of ecosystem services. A better understanding of interlinkages and trade-offs among ecosystem services, and the spatial scales at which services are generated, used and interact, is needed in order to successfully inform land use policies. This includes the need to develop transdisciplinary tools that can disentangle the relationships between the supply of and demand for ecosystem services. This thesis investigates agricultural landscapes as complex social-ecological systems, and uses a multi-method approach to assess ecosystem service generation from different types of agricultural landscapes and to examine the social-ecological nature of these services. More specifically, the thesis discusses the importance of appropriate spatial scales, explores landscape change, integrates stakeholder knowledge and develops tools to investigate supply and demand of multiple ecosystem services. Paper I reviews the literature on ecosystem service mapping, revealing that services were mostly mapped at intermediate spatial scales (municipality and province), and rarely at local scales (farm/village). Although most of the reviewed studies used a resolution of 1 hectare or less, more case-specific local scale mapping is required to unravel the fine-scale dynamics of ecosystem service generation that are needed to inform landscape planning. To explore future uncertainties and identify relevant ecosystem services in a study area, paper II builds alternative scenarios using participatory scenario planning in the Upper Thukela region, South Africa. The paper compares methods to select services for an ecosystem service assessment showing that scenario planning added limited value for identifying ecosystem services, although it improved knowledge of the study area and availed useful discussions with stakeholders. Papers III and IV combines social and biophysical data to study the supply and demand of ecosystem services at farm- and landscape level, through participatory mapping and expert assessments in the Upper Thukela region, South Africa (paper III), and through in-depth interviews and biophysical surveys in Uppsala County, Sweden (paper IV), including small-scale and large-scale farmers. Both papers find apparent differences between the farmer groups in terms of the supply and the demand of services, and also the capacity of the farmers to influence the generation of services (paper III). Paper IV further establishes the importance of using multiple indicators combining social and biophysical data to quantify and investigate the complex social-ecological nature of ecosystem services. A cross-case comparison of ecosystem service bundles, using data from papers III and IV, finds similarities in bundles generated in the large-scale systems, while the small-scale agriculture bundles varied. This thesis provides new insights into the social-ecological generation of ecosystem services at fine scales such as farm and landscape levels, and shows the importance of including the knowledge of various stakeholders, combining different methods and tools to increase the understanding of supply and demand of ecosystem services.
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| 7. |
- Masterson, Vanessa Anne, 1987-
(författare)
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Sense of place and culture in the landscape of home : Understanding social-ecological dynamics on the Wild Coast, South Africa
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Development for sustainable poverty alleviation requires engagement with the values and cultural frames that enable or constrain communities to steward ecosystems and maintain their capacity to support human well-being. Rooted in a social-ecological systems (SES) perspective, this thesis explores the concept of sense of place to understand how emotional and cultural connections to place mediate human responses to change and influence interventions for development. Sense of place is both the attachments to place, as well as the descriptive meanings to which one is attached. Paper I presents an approach and agenda for studying sense of place in SES that emphasizes place attachment and meaning underlying stewardship actions and responses to change.This is empirically explored through a case study on the Wild Coast, South Africa - an area with multiple contested meanings. In this former Bantustan (an area set aside for black South Africans), Apartheid created interdependence between small-holder agriculture and labour migration, where rural homesteads relied on remittances from migrant household members. Today, the contribution of agriculture to livelihoods has declined and many households rely on income from social grants. Interacting social and ecological factors in this region have resulted in social-ecological trap conditions and circular migration continues to be the pattern.Community conservation and ecotourism is one strategy for local socio-economic development. Papers II and III explore community tensions around a proposed nature reserve declaration. In Paper II, a focus on the meanings of locally-defined ecotopes (e.g. forest and abandoned fields) illuminates the interpretations of underlying social-ecological processes. Paper III examines the use of place meanings in narratives of change to show tensions in the discourse of win-win conservation. The stalling of this particular intervention indicates the importance of engaging with multiple meanings of place and the cultural importance of nature.Papers IV and V focus on declining agriculture and continued labour migration. From a theoretical model of people’s abilities, desires and opportunities, Paper IV develops a typology of responses that may contribute to maintaining or resolving social-ecological traps. For this case study, the model identifies the mismatch between i) cultural expectations that frame the desire to farm, and ii) the decline in opportunities for off-farm income to support agriculture. Paper V demonstrates that these expectations are expressed in the idea of emakhaya (the rural landscape of home) as well as reinforced through cultural rituals. The paper identifies a place-based social contract between the living and the ancestors that helps to maintain circular migration and agricultural practices. This suggests that sense of place contributes to system inertia but may also offer opportunities for stewardship.Sense of place is socially constructed as well as produced through experience in ecosystems, and thus constitutes an emergent property of SES. The thesis demonstrates the use of participatory methods to produce an inclusive understanding of place and SES dynamics. The application of place meanings through these methods facilitates critical engagement with imposed interventions. Finally, the thesis shows that sense of place and culture are key for understanding inertia in SES and the capacity for transformation towards stewardship.
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| 8. |
- Borgström, Sara, 1977-
(författare)
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Urban shades of green : Current patterns and future prospects of nature conservation in urban landscapes
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Urban nature provides local ecosystem services such as absorption of air pollutants, reduction of noise, and provision of places for recreation, and is therefore crucial to urban sustainable development. Nature conservation in cities is also part of the global effort to halt biodiversity decline. Urban landscapes, however, display distinguishing social and ecological characteristics and therefore the implementation of nature conservation frameworks into cities, requires reconsideration of what nature to preserve, for whom and where. The aim of this thesis was to examine the current urban nature conservation with special focus on formally protected areas, and discuss their future role in the urban landscape. A social-ecological systems approach was used as framework and both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied. The studies were performed at local to regional scales in the southern part of Sweden. Four key questions were addressed: i) What are the characteristics of nature conservation in urban landscapes? ii) How does establishment of nature conservation areas affect the surrounding urban landscape? iii) In what ways are spatial and temporal scales recognized in practical management of nature conservation areas? and iv) How can the dichotomy of built up and nature conservation areas be overcome in urban planning? Nature reserves in urban, compared to rural landscapes were in general fewer, but larger and included a higher diversity of land covers. They were also based on a higher number and different kinds of objectives than rural nature reserves. Urbanisation adjacent to nature reserves followed the general urbanisation patterns in the cities and no additional increase in urban settlements could be detected. In general, there was a lack of social and ecological linkages between the nature conservation areas and the urban landscape and practical management showed a limited recognition of cross-scale interactions and meso-scales. Such conceptual and physical isolation risks decreasing the public support for nature conservation, cause biodiversity decline, and hence impact the generation of ecosystem services. A major future challenge is therefore to transform current conservation strategies to become a tool where urban nature is perceived, planned and managed as valuable and integrated parts of the city. To enable social-ecological synergies, future urban planning should address proactive approaches together with key components like active enhancement of multifunctional landscapes, cross-scale strategies and border zone management.
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| 9. |
- Goodness, Julie
(författare)
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Linking functional traits and cultural ecosystem services in urban areas through human preferences
- 2016
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Urban areas are now the daily lived experience for the majority of the world’s people, and it is therefore important to explore what kind of ecological communities and corresponding ecosystem functions and services are being generated in these environments. Urban areas are shaped by a variety of factors, but arguably one of the most influential is that of people, in terms of how their preferences and active selective choices for biota play out in the landscape. A better understanding of these processes and dynamics can contribute toward better scientific knowledge as well as inform management decisions for creating more robust and resilient landscapes of ecosystem function and services. A functional traits approach, which links particular aspects of organisms related to fitness to ecosystem processes, functions, and services, may provide one way of interpreting the significance of biodiversity in the urban landscape. While this approach has traditionally linked traits to processes and functions, recently it has been conceptually extended to include services. Links between traits and provisioning, regulating, and supporting services have been well-characterized, but connections to cultural services have been less explored. This thesis addresses this critical information gap and how human preferences could be connected to the traits framework through an examination of the connections between functional traits and cultural ecosystem services. Paper I, a literature review, investigates scholarship outside the explicit field of functional traits to identify potential trait-cultural service linkages. It finds the strongest base of support for connections between traits and aesthetic benefits (particularly visual); though connections to spiritual, heritage, and wellbeing benefits are also identified. It suggests that what is considered a “functional trait” may need to be revisited in light of the expansion of to include not only ecosystem processes and functions, but services as well. The paper also explores how functional traits could be operationalized in a management context, with the development of trait-service indicators. Paper II builds upon the work of Paper I, and provides an empirical, case study interrogation of connections between traits and cultural ecosystem services in Cape Town, South Africa. It examines people’s expressed preferences for plant traits, and finds that traits related to visual and aesthetic appeal are described as the most common reason for selection, though traits related to use (e.g. as food) and low resource input are also cited. It also points to other factors beyond preference that may influence human selection for plants in the landscape. Together, these two papers provide a more detailed understanding of human preferences for traits in urban areas, and which traits may be connected to which services. This builds knowledge within the functional traits field and provides a basis for further study in research. It also points to trait-cultural ecosystem service connections that can be harnessed in management actions to select for trait combinations that will provide both ecosystem services and ecosystem resilience.
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| 10. |
- Graham, Marnie, 1980-
(författare)
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Exploring stakeholder perceptions of an urban protected area and associated co-management arrangements: Macassar Dunes, Cape Town, South Africa
- 2011
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Within our cities the importance of urban green spaces such as forests, parks, wetlands, and protected areas are increasingly recognised for their contribution to human health and wellbeing, and in the provision of ecosystem services. Meanwhile, cities contain much social, cultural, economic, and environmental diversity, and natural resource management strategies for green areas need to account for the diversity of perspectives and conflict spaces that such urban diversity can encapsulate. Here, the empirical focus is on an urban protected area, Macassar Dunes, in Cape Town, bordered by vast informal and township settlement, and subject to a co-management arrangement for the last ten years between representatives of local residents, academic researchers, and conservation and planning authorities. This study examines the range of perceived ‘bridges’ and ‘barriers’ to co-management from the perspectives of stakeholders in the peak co-management body, the Maccasar Dunes Co-Management Association Management Committee (MDCA MC). This analysis finds the arrangements are perceived as both highly valuable and highly contested amongst MDCA MC stakeholders, with a wide array of bridges and barriers identified. In a complementary analysis the range of place meanings attached to Macassar Dunes within the MDCA MC are examined using the ‘sense of place’ concept. The contention of this thesis is that exploring issues of place through recognising places and their meanings as relational, political and contested can contribute to a co-management theory and practice which is more sensitive to the places through which it is enacted, and provide possibilities for understanding conflict in co-management arrangements.
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