Maes, Mikaël J. A.; (2021) Connecting science with policy for sustainable development of urban ecosystems. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Challenges remain to sustainably develop urban ecosystems, in part because sustainable development has many environmental, societal and economic dimensions which are intertwined. As part of this challenge, urban ecosystems are increasingly considered to deliver human health benefits, but the association between human health benefits and urban ecosystems, and how this knowledge can inform decision-making remains unclear. Here, I explored how to sustainably develop urban ecosystems by addressing a subset of this challenge, focusing on existing scientific knowledge gaps between human health and urban ecosystem exposure, the barriers to integrate this information into urban ecosystem accounting, and use of these outputs in public policy to inform decision-making related to urban ecosystems. First, I reviewed evidence using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as an analytical framework to show that development of urban ecosystems cannot be addressed without addressing other non-environmental policy objectives and that cross-disciplinary work is needed to resolve the above-mentioned knowledge gaps. Then, using a health dataset of approximately 6,600 children in the London metropolitan area, United Kingdom, I showed that natural environments, particularly woodland, were associated with children’s cognition and mental health, while other types of natural environments had no or weaker associations. Using these insights, I then reviewed international environmental accounting rules and found that these frameworks do not facilitate integration of cognitive and mental health benefits into urban environmental accounts. Finally, I assessed the relevance of environmental accounting to the broader public policy community and showed that environmental accounts have cross-cutting relevance for public sector decision-making. Although progress has been made to understand the role of urban ecosystems for cognition and mental health, key impediments also remain within the science, environmental accounting and public policy blocking progress to sustainably develop these. I see cross-disciplinary coordination structures as indispensable to support sustainable development of urban ecosystems globally.

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