The Baakens River Valley, a priority site within the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Open Space System (NM MOSS), is a ‘green lung’ extending over approximately 2000 hectares within the municipality. The Baakens river traverses east–west for about 23 km, before discharging into the city harbour, where the lower reaches have been canalised.
 Photo credit: Nadia Wessels

By Nadia Wessels, Nadia Sitas, Patrick O’Farrell, and Karen J. Esler.

Read the full paper here.

Natural areas within cities provide important benefits to society. These benefits include flood and temperature regulation, mitigation against climate change, provision of food and medicinal supplies, and enhancement of spiritual, physical, and mental well-being. These nature benefits are referred to as “ecosystem services.” In the Global South, particularly in Africa, unprecedented urbanisation is rapidly transforming natural areas, adversely impacting many of these ecosystem services and the associated societal benefits.

We investigated whether and the extent to which municipalities consider and prioritise the ecosystem services derived from natural open space in their planning, management, and budgeting, and whether the spatial and temporal implications of ecosystem service provision are incorporated into municipal planning. We used a metropolitan municipality in South Africa as a case study and focussed on the ecosystem services that the city’s natural open space system provides. We did this by analysing various municipal decision-support documents used in municipal planning and decision making, and by interviewing senior municipal officials who work in departments and whose work impacts the city’s natural open space system. We found that several factors influence planning for, and management of, natural open-space and the ecosystem services these provide. These factors include municipal service delivery and equity challenges, complex institutional constraints, and poverty, with little focus on the socio-economic opportunities and other benefits provided by natural open space systems. Values, perceptions, and knowledge also influence the management of ecosystem services and their incorporation into municipal planning. Policy and management implications identified in our study include prioritisation of the regulating functions provided by natural open space systems, which is pivotal in the urban resilience agenda; building on the inherent appreciation of nature features as city assets, while simultaneously achieving socio-economic upliftment; improved (on-site) collaborative management of natural open spaces; and involvement of local government officials in the preparation and updating of municipal decision support documents, to ensure skills and knowledge transfer, and entrench natural open space systems into local government departments.