Sustainability and the City - Center for Urban Green Spaces

Urban BiodiversityFor a resilient urban futuregreatly affected by activities outsidethe open spaces. Area basedconservation strategies, therefore,would be difficult to yield resultunless and until urban biodiversityis integrated in the regional planningand urban development plans andpolicies. New tools such as StrategicEnvironment Assessment (SEA)and The Economics of Ecosystemsand Biodiversity (TEEB) would beextremely useful in this context.The available open spaces must bemanaged based on sound ecologicalprinciples. Maintenance of diversityof habitats and species across openspaces, maintaining structuralfeatures of biodiversity, and restricteduse of exotic plant species are someof the key strategies. Also, a certainlevel of natural diversity existsbetween- for example, among urbanparks- that needs to be maintainedrather than bringing all the parksin an urban area under a similarmanagement regime and speciescomposition. Amelioration of theoverall urban area through greennetworks and channels in the formof road-side avenue plantations,streams, and community and homesteadgardens etc would be critical inexpanding the ‘biodiversity space’ inthe cities.Regular monitoring of ecosystemsis important to measure themanagement effectiveness of theconservation strategies applied, andto adapt accordingly. Monitoringurban biodiversity is therefore animportant activity. Most commonlyused indicators for urban ecologicalmonitoring are birds, as they aresensitive to even small environmentalchanges and thus useful models forstudying a variety of environmentalproblems. An unnatural changein the population of a bird speciesis an indication of an ecologicalimbalance in the urban environmentand provides an ‘early warning’to the citizens. Thus maintainingthe populations of bird species inurban areas is also an economicallyExisting diversity of the urban open spaces must be maintained while undertaking conservation and maintenanceof these patchesviable option for urban ecosystemmanagement. Regular monitoring ofurban biodiversity indicators is alsoimmensely useful for monitoring theimpacts of climate change on urbanecosystems.Engagement of citizens has beenone of the most important factors insuccessful conservation managementof urban biodiversity in many citiesof the world. Ecosystem servicestrade-offs exist in the way openspaces are managed; for example, apark managed to optimize space forwalk and sports would have less plantdensity and cover leading to reducedcooling effect. Citizens groups andassociations must be at the centrestage to plan and manage the openspaces for conserving biodiversityand for optimum provisioning ofecosystem services. Involvementof citizens is especially criticalwhen it comes to monitoring urbanbiodiversity.The House Sparrow (Passerdomesticus) is known to co-occurwith humans since historic times,and thus serves as a good indicatorof the ecological quality. Recently amajor decline in its population wasreported from many parts of theworld. Several studies and initiativesare now focussing on this species,not only to restore its population butalso to look into the reasons of itsdecline so as to get a clue for humanpopulations as well. Decline in thisspecies was also reported from Delhiand other parts in India. While thereasons of its decline are yet to beestablished, a great deal of initiativespave the way for restoring thepopulation. Delhi Government hastaken an important step by declaringthe House Sparrow as the State Birdof Delhi. All this explicitly reflectsnot only the importance of differentelements of urban biodiversity, butalso the need for regular monitoringto be able to take timely action.Management of urban biodiversityis not a new concept. Historically,the foremost criteria for humansettlements used to be presenceof clean water bodies and healthyecosystems. The high-paceddevelopment of human settlementsand the changing relationship ofhumans with nature have poseda challenge today on the urbanmanagers to find new and innovativeways to sustain healthy urbanecosystems. Predicted impacts ofclimate change and ever increasingthreat from natural disasters only addto this challenge. Investing in urbanbiodiversity seems to be the futureright now to tackle the situation andto continue to receive the ecosystemservices for our own health andoverall wellbeing. •July 20137