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- Andersson, Erik, et al.
(author)
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Reconnecting Cities to the Biosphere : Stewardship of Green Infrastructure and Urban Ecosystem Services
- 2014
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In: Ambio. - : Springer. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209. ; 43:4, s. 445-453
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Within-city green infrastructure can offer opportunities and new contexts for people to become stewards of ecosystem services. We analyze cities as social-ecological systems, synthesize the literature, and provide examples from more than 15 years of research in the Stockholm urban region, Sweden. The social-ecological approach spans from investigating ecosystem properties to the social frameworks and personal values that drive and shape human interactions with nature. Key findings demonstrate that urban ecosystem services are generated by social-ecological systems and that local stewards are critically important. However, land-use planning and management seldom account for their role in the generation of urban ecosystem services. While the small scale patchwork of land uses in cities stimulates intense interactions across borders much focus is still on individual patches. The results highlight the importance and complexity of stewardship of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services and of the planning and governance of urban green infrastructure.
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3. |
- Barthel, Stephan, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Bio-cultural refugia : Safeguarding diversity of practices for food security and biodiversity
- 2013
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In: Global Environmental Change. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-3780 .- 1872-9495. ; 23:5, s. 1142-1152
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Food security for a growing world population is high on the list of grand sustainability challenges, as is reducing the pace of biodiversity loss in landscapes of food production. Here we shed new insights on areas that harbor place specific social memories related to food security and stewardship of biodiversity. We call them bio-cultural refugia. Our goals are to illuminate how bio-cultural refugia store, revive and transmit memory of agricultural biodiversity and ecosystem services, and how such social memories are carried forward between people and across cohorts. We discuss the functions of such refugia for addressing the twin goals of food security and biodiversity conservation in landscapes of food production. The methodological approach is first of its kind in combining the discourses on food security, social memory and biodiversity management. We find that the rich biodiversity of many regionally distinct cultural landscapes has been maintained through a mosaic of management practices that have co-evolved in relation to local environmental fluctuations, and that such practices are carried forward by both biophysical and social features in bio-cultural refugia including; genotypes, artifacts, written accounts, as well as embodied rituals, art, oral traditions and self-organized systems of rules. Combined these structure a diverse portfolio of practices that result in genetic reservoirs—source areas—for the wide array of species, which in interplay produce vital ecosystem services, needed for future food security related to environmental uncertainties, volatile financial markets and large scale conflicts. In Europe, processes related to the large-scale industrialization of agriculture threaten such bio-cultural refugia. The paper highlights that the dual goals to reduce pressures from modern agriculture on biodiversity, while maintaining food security, entails more extensive collaboration with farmers oriented toward ecologically sound practices.
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4. |
- Barthel, Stephan, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Biocultural Refugia : Combating the Erosion of Diversity in Landscapes of Food Production
- 2013
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In: Ecology and Society. - 1708-3087. ; 18:4, s. UNSP 71-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- There is urgent need to both reduce the rate of biodiversity loss caused by industrialized agriculture and feed morepeople. The aim of this paper is to highlight the role of places that harbor traditional ecological knowledge, artifacts, and methodswhen preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services in landscapes of food production. We use three examples in Europe ofbiocultural refugia, defined as the physical places that not only shelter farm biodiversity, but also carry knowledge and experiencesabout practical management of how to produce food while stewarding biodiversity and ecosystem services. Memory carriersinclude genotypes, landscape features, oral, and artistic traditions and self-organized systems of rules, and as such reflect adiverse portfolio of practices on how to deal with unpredictable change. We find that the rich biodiversity of many regionallydistinct cultural landscapes has been maintained through different smallholder practices developed in relation to localenvironmental fluctuations and carried within biocultural refugia for as long as millennia. Places that transmit traditionalecological knowledge and practices hold important lessons for policy makers since they may provide genetic and culturalreservoirs — refugia — for the wide array of species that have co-evolved with humans in Europe for more than 6000 thousandyrs. Biodiversity restoration projects in domesticated landscapes can employ the biophysical elements and cultural practicesembedded in biocultural refugia to create locally adapted small-scale mosaics of habitats that allow species to flourish and adaptto change. We conclude that such insights must be included in discussions of land-sparing vs. land-sharing when producingmore food while combating loss of biodiversity. We found the latter strategy rational in domesticated landscapes with a longhistory of agriculture
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5. |
- Barthel, Stephan, et al.
(author)
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Chans att sätta Stockholm på kartan
- 2011
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In: Svenska Dagbladet. - Stockholm.
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Journal article (pop. science, debate, etc.)abstract
- Så beskriver ett antal forskare från Stockholm Resilience Centre och KTH läget nu när Albano ska utvecklas till ett nytt universitetsområde. Albano kan bli en internationell förebild när det gäller hållbart byggande om politikerna tar sitt ansvar, skriver forskarna i en debattartikel i Svenska Dagbladet idag. På Stockholm Resilience Centres webbplats finns texten även på engelska.
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6. |
- Barthel, Stephan, 1968-, et al.
(author)
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Chans sätta Stockholm på kartan
- 2011
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In: Svenska dagbladet. - Stockholm : Svenska Dagbladet.
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Other publication (pop. science, debate, etc.)
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7. |
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8. |
- Barthel, Stephan, et al.
(author)
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Innovative Memory and Resilient Cities : Echoes from Ancient Constantinople
- 2010
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In: The Urban Mind. - Uppsala : Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University. - 9789150621754 ; , s. 391-405
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This chapter uses insights from resilience thinking in analysing a two-thousand-year period of ancient and modern Constantinople, addressing one of the great challenges of the Urban Anthropocene: how to nurture an ecologically sound urbanisation. One of the lessons is that Constantinople maintained a diversity of insurance strategies to a greater degree than many historical and contemporary urban centres. It invested heavily not only in military infrastructure but also in systems for supplying, storing, and producing food and water. From major granaries and at least four harbours the citizens could receive seaborne goods, but during sieges the trade networks broke down. At those times, when supplies ran dry, there were possibilities to cultivate food within the defensive walls and to catch fish in the Golden Horn. Repeated sieges, which occurred on average every fifty years, generated a diversity of social-ecological memories – the means by which the knowledge, experience, and practice of how to manage a local ecosystem were stored and transmitted in a community. These memories existed in multiple groups of society, partly as a response to the collapse of long-distance, seaborne, grain transports from Egypt. Food production and transports were decentralized into a plethora of smaller subsistence communities (oikoi), which also sold the surplus to the markets of the city. In this way Constantinople became more self-reliant on regional ecosystems. An additional result was that the defensive walls were moved, not in order to construct more buildings but to increase the proportion of gardens and agricultural land. In a comparison with Cairo, it can be seen that these innovations related to enhanced self-reliance in food production made it possible for Constantinople to bounce back from extreme hardships, such as extended sieges, without collapsing into chaos or moral decay. Transformed urban morphology of the city would simply remind residents, through the visual presence of a living garden culture, of the importance of the latter for food security. Without the gardens the long intervals between sieges would probably have been enough to dissolve living memory. Hence, the urban resilience of Constantinople was enhanced, promoting well-established old regimes and traditions of importance for producing ecosystem services to society while at the same time testing and refining new and successful regimes, or in other words through the interplay of memory and innovation. Currently, and even more so in decades to come, the mindsets of urban people hold power in a global arena. Questions related to how the loss of green space in metropolitan landscapes will affect worldviews are worrisome since it is the desires and demands of urban people that will affect future decisions and essentially determine the fate of the planet. People throughout the world, and not least in Western societies, need to be constantly reminded of our dependence on a living planet and stay motivated to support it. Social-ecological memories related to local food production have to be nurtured in urban landscapes as well, and an urban morphology is needed that strengthens ecological awareness across urban populations rather than the opposite.
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9. |
- Barthel, Stephan, et al.
(author)
-
Innovative memory and resilient cities : echoes from ancient Constantinople
- 2011
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In: The urban mind. - Uppsala : Uppsala universitet. ; , s. 391-406
-
Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This chapter uses insights from resilience thinking in analysing a two-thousand-year periodof ancient and modern Constantinople, addressing one of the great challenges of the UrbanAnthropocene: how to nurture an ecologically sound urbanisation. One of the lessons isthat Constantinople maintained a diversity of insurance strategies to a greater degree thanmany historical and contemporary urban centres. It invested heavily not only in militaryinfrastructure but also in systems for supplying, storing, and producing food and water.From major granaries and at least four harbours the citizens could receive seaborne goods,but during sieges the trade networks broke down. At those times, when supplies ran dry,there were possibilities to cultivate food within the defensive walls and to catch fish in theGolden Horn. Repeated sieges, which occurred on average every fifty years, generated adiversity of social-ecological memories – the means by which the knowledge, experience,and practice of how to manage a local ecosystem were stored and transmitted in acommunity. These memories existed in multiple groups of society, partly as a response tothe collapse of long-distance, seaborne, grain transports from Egypt. Food production andtransports were decentralized into a plethora of smaller subsistence communities (oikoi),which also sold the surplus to the markets of the city. In this way Constantinople becamemore self-reliant on regional ecosystems. An additional result was that the defensive wallswere moved, not in order to construct more buildings but to increase the proportionof gardens and agricultural land. In a comparison with Cairo, it can be seen that theseinnovations related to enhanced self-reliance in food production made it possible for392Constantinople to bounce back from extreme hardships, such as extended sieges, withoutcollapsing into chaos or moral decay. Transformed urban morphology of the city wouldsimply remind residents, through the visual presence of a living garden culture, of theimportance of the latter for food security. Without the gardens the long intervals betweensieges would probably have been enough to dissolve living memory. Hence, the urbanresilience of Constantinople was enhanced, promoting well-established old regimes andtraditions of importance for producing ecosystem services to society while at the sametime testing and refining new and successful regimes, or in other words through theinterplay of memory and innovation. Currently, and even more so in decades to come, themindsets of urban people hold power in a global arena. Questions related to how the lossof green space in metropolitan landscapes will affect worldviews are worrisome since it isthe desires and demands of urban people that will affect future decisions and essentiallydetermine the fate of the planet. People throughout the world, and not least in Westernsocieties, need to be constantly reminded of our dependence on a living planet and staymotivated to support it. Social-ecological memories related to local food production haveto be nurtured in urban landscapes as well, and an urban morphology is needed thatstrengthens ecological awareness across urban populations rather than the opposite.
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