Implementation of the ecosystem services approach in Swedish municipal planning

Abstract

While ecosystem-based planning approaches are increasingly promoted through international and national policies, municipalities are still struggling with translating them into practice. Against this background, this paper aims to increase knowledge of current advances and possible ways to support the implementation of the ecosystem services approach at the municipal level. More specifically, we analyze how services provided by ecosystems have been integrated in comprehensive planning within the municipality of Malmö in Sweden over the last 60 years, a declared forerunner in local environmental governance. Based on a content analysis of comprehensive plans over the period 1956-2014 and interviews with municipal stakeholders, this paper demonstrates how planning has shifted over time towards a more holistic view of ecosystem services and their significance for human well-being and urban sustainability. Both explicit and implicit applications of the ecosystem service concept were found in the analyzed comprehensive plans and associated programs and projects. Our study shows how these applications reflect international, national, and local policy changes, and indicates how municipalities can gradually integrate the ecosystem services approach into comprehensive planning and facilitate the transition from implicit to more explicit knowledge use.

Integration of Ecosystem Services in Regional Spatial Plans in Western Switzerland

“…We summed the binary scores to give a total number of ES mentions in the plan sections (e.g., strategic sections and four operation subsections). This is in accordance with a previous work using content analysis that counted and added textual elements [44,50]. The number of strategical objectives and measure sheets varied across cantons.…”

“…Hsieh and Shannon [49] recommended using directed content analysis to support and extend an existing theory as well as identifying key concepts and variables throughout the documents. We chose to perform a deeper content analysis that accounts for the implicit use of the ES concept [14,50].…”

“…Directed content analysis can be used to identify key concepts and variables throughout the documents [49,53], and to account for this lack of consistency in the terminology, we captured every time the plan discusses explicitly or implicitly about the benefits ecosystems provide. However, we excluded general statements about environmental protection, landscape preservation, or building green areas, as there is no benefit associated with it, in accordance with previous work [31,50].…”

“…One may postulate that the integration of ES in structural plans is related to the level of urbanization, as cantons with the largest shares of agricultural, wooded, or unproductive surfaces integrated ES better as a binding element. It is acknowledged that the ability of urban ecosystems to provide services is often jeopardized by fast land use change [66,67], and that including them in spatial plans is crucial [50]. However, this can be limited by the current instruments and tools for mapping and assessing urban ES [68].…”

The Institutionalization of Nature-Based Solutions—A Discourse Analysis of Emergent Literature

“…In line with this study, Schubert et al (2018) [50] address the issue of ecosystem services and the way they have been incorporated in the Swedish planning context. Some references are made to NBS, mostly under the umbrella of ecosystem service as a related term.…”