Abstract
The social role of peri-urban forests is diversifying, and this implies that peri-urban forests are redesigned to meet and shape social demands. A key challenge is the integration of the social demands for green spaces with the maintenance of key ecosystem structures and processes as well as the biodiversity of the green spaces. In this study, we report our experience and insights gathered through the implementation of a project targeting a peri-urban forest development near the city of Cluj-Napoca. One key particularity of the project was that it was designed by the city hall in cooperation with a major NGO, and the academic sector joined the project in its second stage, with the aim of mainstreaming ecosystem services and biodiversity within a well-established design concept. After comprehensively assessing the biodiversity and ecosystem services of the targeted forest, we found that the ecosystem supply was strongly related to the tree stand structure and the forestry management from the past decades. The public expressed concerns related to the parts of the established development design, which included built structures, artificial lights, toilets, and paved roads, perceiving that these actions will negatively influence the natural environment. We present the modifications undertaken in the project design after the public consultation and deliberation within the implementation team. An anonymous internal evaluation of the implementation team shows appreciation for the human and professional interactions and the resulting innovation and learning opportunities. To improve interdisciplinary collaborations, there is a need for a good institutional support and financial reward, transparency, and good communication within the team. At the end of the “Discussion” section, we present the insights gathered from this interdisciplinary experience in order to guide further similar projects in Central and Eastern Europe.
Highlights
Over half of the world population and over 70% of population of Europe currently live in urban areas (Eurostat, 2018)
NGO’s like the Romanian Ornithological Society, the Ecouri Verzi, and Somes Delivery regularly organize field trips and activities, targeting the urban and peri-urban green spaces of Cluj-Napoca, where learning about the natural environment is in focus
While being local in character, our case study reveals social–ecological system features which may be common to other peri-urban forests from Romania and Eastern Europe
Summary
Over half of the world population and over 70% of population of Europe currently live in urban areas (Eurostat, 2018). It is of utmost importance to develop operational strategies for integrating the ecosystem resilience and ecosystem services of the peri-urban green spaces with various human demands and to develop nature-friendly values and behaviors at the level of the society related to urban and peri-urban ecosystems (Gómez-Baggethun et al, 2013; McPhearson et al, 2015; Scott et al, 2018). Differences in epistemology and paradigms on which formal institutions and different experts base their works and interpret key concepts (e.g., “ecosystem service,” “sustainability”) is a major challenge (Abson et al, 2014; Gómez-Baggethun and Martín-López, 2015; Kovács et al, 2015; Scott et al, 2018; Miller and Mössner, 2020). A range of new concepts, which are established in the sustainability science literature, needs to be understood and accepted by local formal authorities and policymakers to be mainstreamed in the decisionmaking
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