The implementation of adaptation actions in local conservation management is a new and complex task with multiple facets, influenced by factors differing from site to site. A transdisciplinary perspective is therefore required to identify and implement effective solutions. To address this, the International Conference on Managing Protected Areas under Climate Change brought together international scientists, conservation managers, and decision-makers to discuss current experiences with local adaptation of conservation management. This paper summarizes the main issues for implementing adaptation that emerged from the conference. These include a series of conclusions and recommendations on monitoring, sensitivity assessment, current and future management practices, and legal and policy aspects. A range of spatial and temporal scales must be considered in the implementation of climate-adapted management. The adaptation process must be area-specific and consider the ecosystem and the social and economic conditions within and beyond protected area boundaries. However, a strategic overview is also needed: management at each site should be informed by conservation priorities and likely impacts of climate change at regional or even wider scales. Acting across these levels will be a long and continuous process, requiring coordination with actors outside the "traditional" conservation sector. To achieve this, a range of research, communication, and policy/legal actions is required. We identify a series of important actions that need to be taken at different scales to enable managers of protected sites to adapt successfully to a changing climate.
Green regeneration has become a common strategy for improving quality of life in disadvantaged neighborhoods in shrinking cities. The role and function of new green spaces may change, however, when cities experience new growth. Set against this context, this paper analyzes a case study, the Lene-Voigt-Park in Leipzig, which was established on a former brownfield site. Using a combination of methods which include an analysis of housing advertisements and interviews, the paper explores the changing role of the park in the context of urban regeneration after the city’s turn from shrinkage towards new growth. It discusses whether the concept of green gentrification may help to explain this role. As a result of our analysis, we argue that Lene-Voigt-Park has indeed operated as a trigger for structural, social, and symbolic upgrades in the growing city of Leipzig, but only in combination with real estate market developments, which are the main drivers of change. The concept of green gentrification does help to better understand the role of different factors—first and foremost that of green space. We also discovered some specifics of our case that may enrich the green gentrification debate. Leipzig serves as an example for a number of regrowing cities across Europe where green gentrification might represent a challenge.
There is a rapidly growing body of literature on the theory about the ecosystem service concept and the practical assessment of ecosystem services in different contexts ranging from natural to urban environments. Yet, where does the concept reach its limits? This paper critically reflects the application of the ecosystem service concept in urban environments illustrating the handling of urban structures (incl. built-up areas) and the risk that the normative principle of the concept could be missed. It is shown that in theory urban structures refer to a variety of ecosystem concepts. As a starting point for ecosystem service assessments, these could be classified into natural, managed, constructed and overbuilt systems. Since ecosystem service concepts do not directly refer to a specific ecosystem definition, but to biophysical structures and processes, all of these classes could be included. However, the dependency on context and scale makes a differentiation in practical ecosystem services assessment challenging. We conclude that the ecosystem service concept does not reach its limits in urban environments, but urban environments represent an extreme case characterized by multifunctionality and a high degree of modification that enables to uncover research challenges applying in any environment. There is a need for a more transparent reporting of theoretical and methodological assumptions to facilitate the comparability between ecosystem service assessments. Comprehensive approaches that consider multiple ecosystem services and include human input, human modification, the ecosystem status as well as their interactions are required to understand the spatial relations between ecosystem services delivered by different ecosystems.
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