Ecosystem services in urban landscapes: practical applications and governance implications – the URBES approach

Urban landscapes are the everyday environment for the majority of the global population —some 52%, with nearly 80% of European and U.S. citizens living in cities and urban regions (UN World Population Prospects, 2011). More than 90% of the global GDP is produced in cities (Seto et al., 2012). The continuous growth in the number and size of most urban areas comes with an increasing demand for resources and energy, which poses great challenges for ensuring human welfare while preventing further loss of biodiversity at local, regional, and global scales (Breuste et al., 2013). Deepening our understanding of how urban ecosystems function under the combined pressures of dense populations, changing climates, and the intense growth of infrastructure as well as how they provide goods and services for urban dwellers, is critical to improving our ability to govern local and global ecosystem change for the benefit of all species. Additionally, knowledge of how ecosystem services change over time and what enhances and limits their performance is critical to managing urban ecosystems so that the supply of services meets demand in a rapidly urbanizing world (Elmqvist et al., 2013; Gomez-Baggathun et al., 2013).