Globally, the process of urbanization is transforming land use and, as a consequence, reducing the efficiency of ecosystem services (ESs), which ensure a healthy and comfortable urban environment. In cities, green infrastructure (GI) is a key source of urban ESs. Russia is a highly urbanized country: 70% of its population live in towns or cities. As cities continue to expand, they are swallowing unsealed lands that support ESs. In this paper, we present the results of an analysis of the current state and recent changes in urban GI in Russia’s 16 largest cities, including a biophysical evaluation of key urban ESs, using remote sensing data and freely available statistics. Our analysis identifies a weak correlation between GI area, ES volume, and favorable climate conditions as well as a stronger correlation between ESs and the increasing rate of urbanization. Considering Russia’s high level of urbanization, the key importance of ESs for the well-being of citizens, and ongoing reductions of urban GI, major revisions to urban planning policy are required. Indicators of urban biodiversity, GI, and ESs should be incorporated into decision-making processes. In particular, it is vital that the accounting and monitoring of GI and ESs are established in all of Russia’s larger cities.
Against the background of global problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss and marine pollution, political confrontation can frustrate joint action to the point of non-implementation of already reached agreements. Consequently, we consider the role that environmental policy transfer driven by non-governmental experts can play at an informal level of collaboration when the formal policy level is weakened by tension. Studying the case of Germany and Russia, the authors evaluate the outcomes of three policy transfer projects in the field of environmental planning following the onset of the Crimean conflict in February 2014. By means of qualitative research, we can show thatdespite ongoing political discordsubstantive thematic cooperation is still being conducted "in the shadow of confrontation" with manifold positive impacts in the national and international context. This underlines the importance of establishing robust transnational expert networks that will be highly resilient even during troubled times.
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