C03: Social-ecological dynamics, use of ecosystem services, and governance of green and blue infrastructure in urbanization areas.

Green infrastructures are networks of natural and semi-natural areas with other environmental features (including waterbodies and farmlands) designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services. In the face of the rapid urbanization that is currently observed and forecasted especially in Asia, green infrastructure has become an important component of both urban and rural ecosystems that underpins multiple aspects of human well-being. This project (composed of five work-packages, WPs) aims to provide social-ecological knowledge on the dynamics, values, development options, and governance of green infrastructure along the rural-urban interface in Bengaluru. WP1 will identify socio-ecological impacts of urbanization on agricultural systems (soil, water qualities, and farmers’ socio-economics) based on a systematic literature review. WP2 will elicit the ecological, demographic, and socio-economic drivers shaping composition, configuration, and temporal dynamics of green infrastructures at plot, village, and regional scales along rural-urban settings. WP3 will map and quantify the ecosystem services uses and subjective well-being around green infrastructures through a web-based Public Participation GIS survey. WP4 will explore the changes in cross-scalar governance of green infrastructure. For doing so, it will analyze data on main drivers of change in institutions and governance of green infrastructure in rural-urban settings, their actors and implications to change in governance of green infrastructures. WP5 will establish a social-ecological framework relating social and ecological characteristics to the outcomes in the governance and management of green infrastructures under urbanization. Project C03 will contextualize the regional focus of the research unit from a global perspective, allowing for a meaningful interpretation and upscaling of research units insights. It will also integrate the socio-ecological datasets collected in various projects of FOR2432 and its elements. Overall, this project will explore the usefulness and advance the social-ecological systems framework for understanding the role of green infrastructure in urbanizing environments.

Prof. Dr. T. Plieninger
Sozial-Ökologische Interaktionen in Agrarsystemen
Universität Kassel

Prof. Dr. A. Thiel
Internationale Agrarpolitik und Umweltgovernance
Universität Kassel

Pramila Thapa
Doctoral Researcher

Arvind Lakshmisha
Doctoral Researcher

Indian partner project:
Ecosystem services, agricultural diversification, and the smallholders livelihood in Bangalore
S. Purushothaman, Azim Premji University, Bangalore & S. Devy, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore

Spatial modelling of individual service choices and their implications for social-ecological transitions

This project seeks to explore the relationships between the locations of individuals along a rural to urban gradient and the choices that they make about livelihoods and the use of both ecosystem and non-ecosystem services. Urbanisation can be viewed as a process in which members of a growing human population increasingly prioritise non-ecosystem services over ecosystem services. This trend is accompanied by population densification, an upscaling of both demand and ecological impacts, and a disconnection of people and ecosystems. Based on spatial models of urban growth and its relationship to agriculture we would like to understand (i) how the rural-urban interface organizes itself, and whether its formation in space follows naturally from simple first principles, (ii) whether and how landscape heterogeneity, such as local differences in agricultural potential of soils, affects the pattern and speed of urbanisation, and (iii) whether, and how, cooperative or defective interactions between adjacent communities can influence the formation of the rural-urban interface in developing cities such as Bangalore.

We will develop a social-ecological model based on the social-ecological systems framework of Ostrom starting with a minimal set of rules, which will be combined into a simple spatial model. In particular, we will assume that (i) the population grows and that it must produce sufficient food, (ii) the quantity of food production differs between urban and rural environments, (iii) urbanisation leads to ecological degradation, (iv) people can and will move between adjacent locations, (v) decisions about whether and where to move are based rationally on expected costs and benefits, and (vi) local communities can decide whether or not to allow further settlement in their own location. The model will be used to explore the consequences of these assumptions for the process of progressive urbanisation in the rural-urban interface.

Population growth and human movements will be simulated in a spatially structured landscape using a reaction-diffusion model. This will be combined with a game theoretic approach to simulate negotiations between cell inhabitants, e.g. using the hawk-dove game, in which players choose whether to aggressively pursue a good and risk conflict, or to adopt a safer strategy. For instance, the inhabitants of a given neighbourhood may choose to attempt urban expansion by settling agricultural land and trying to keep the population density low. More complex model versions will be grounded in real data generated within the framework of FOR2432.

The goal of the modelling exercise is to explore how human choices and preferences may explain the self-organised formation of spatial patterns and spatial dynamics, such as agricultural expansion on the city perimeter of the city in the context of urbanisation and agriculture. This will allow us to better understand both the conditions under which competitive interactions arise and the conditions under which they increase household vulnerability.

Principal investigators:

Prof. Dr. G.S. Cumming
Universität Kapstadt,
Südafrika

Prof. Dr. K. Wiegand
Ökosystemmodellierung
Universität Göttingen

Prof. Dr. T. Tscharntke
Agrarökologie
Universität Göttingen

Project team:

Sivee Chawla
Doctoral Researcher