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Ecosystems provide numerous benefits to the health and wellbeing of our communities and the planet. How do perceptions of ecosystems and their benefits influence urban development?

For more information check out these resources:

• The application of property rights in ecosystem service markets

Transcript

Host: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Land Use Podcast. My name is Aysha Wu with the Alberta Land Institute.

Today we have a great episode about ecosystem service values, but before we start, I would like to acknowledge that the ¶®É«µÛ, its buildings, labs and research stations are primarily located on the territory of the Néhiyaw (Cree), Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Métis, Nakoda (Stoney), Dene, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Anishinaabe (Ojibway/Saulteaux), lands that are now known as part of Treaties 6, 7 and 8 and homeland of the Métis. The ¶®É«µÛ respects the sovereignty, lands, histories, languages, knowledge systems and cultures of all First Nations, Métis and Inuit nations.

Ecosystems and natural spaces have many benefits to individuals and the environment and are key to mitigating the effects of climate change. How do perceptions of these ecosystems and their benefits affect how they’re incorporated into urban environments?

Urban Planner Nick Baran is here with me today to discuss his research on how ecosystem service values affect green infrastructure and urban development. Welcome, Nick! Do you want to introduce yourself?

Nicklas: Yeah, for sure. I'm Nick Baran. I'm a planner and development officer right now at Lacombe County, but before that I was a masters student in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at the U of A right here. Ever since I finished that in 2022, I've been just working as a full time planner, but we're here, I guess, to talk about my research. So in my masters I did do research on ecosystem services and urban planning and that's really what I'm interested in. Even though I'm a rural planner now, it is still very interesting to me. So I still have that passion in my heart.

Host: That's awesome. So before we dive into the research, do you want to tell me what ecosystem services are?

Nicklas: For sure. Yeah. So ecosystem services in the simplest terms are basically benefits that humans get from ecosystems. In the simplest terms, that's like how it's defined. If there's an ecosystem, it could be as small as just one tree, a street tree, or a wetland complex or like the Edmonton's River Valley, all of these are ecosystems, and then they provide various benefits to humans. And so basically what ecosystem services is, is that understanding those benefits to human society and how we can like better understand what value ecosystems give us.

Host: Okay.

Nicklas: Yeah.

Host: Could you give me some examples of ecosystem services?

Nicklas: Yeah, for sure. There's there's four major categories of ecosystem services that scholars have characterized. So there is first, supporting services. So supporting services would be something that is inherent, that ecosystems inherently do. They're not necessarily of benefit to humans per say. So for example like trees photosynthesizing or ecosystems producing nutrients and stuff like that. Like that's really required as background for ecosystems to exist and then give us the benefits that we get, of course.

Then there's regulating services. So for example, in urban environments we have stressors such as flood, there could be wildfire smoke, and then it's all exacerbating because of climate change, of course. So basically what regulating services would be is that ecosystems are helping to regulate those climate stressors. So if there is like a floodplain that is intact and it's in its natural state, that can help provide a buffer to flooding and stuff like that. So that's what that is.

There's cultural ecosystem services which are very difficult to quantify. Basically, it would be something that is of cultural benefit or something that you wouldn't necessarily think of. So for example various indigenous communities associate various ecosystems, various plants, animals with certain spiritual implications. And then they have that considerations. But other than that, like as you know, people love camping, they love fishing, they love hunting, they love just walking in nature, going for walks. People just appreciate that, right? And it's hard to put a money value on that.

Then there's provisioning services. So provisioning services would be like things-materials or things-goods that we would actually get from ecosystems. So for example, agro ecosystems provide food for everyone basically. And then there is just other benefits, for example like lumber in the forestry industry. Like these are all products that we get from ecosystems. So basically what that would entail is humans going in and harvesting stuff from ecosystems to support our civilization.

Host: Okay. Yeah, awesome. Why is it an important area of study?

Nicklas: It's very important to understand ecosystem services because ultimately, like how the environmentalist movement started in the 70's was just that, hey, nature is important. It's important just because it is, right? It's just nature and we need to preserve it, right? That was the main argument. And then when you look at it though, from an economic standpoint or a social standpoint then people would be pushing back. They'd be like, well, we need to feed people. We need to make money and you know, like all of these other things, there's politics behind it. So it's really hard to convince people that ecosystems are worth preserving, or they're worth enhancing for humans because they don't inherently see the benefit that they provide.

So basically the importance of the ecosystem services concept is that, hey, this ecosystem exists and it actually provides benefits for humans. And here's how we can study that and maybe potentially quantify it or provide it in a format that decision makers can value rather than making it more of a philosophical or ethical argument. In terms of, when it comes to politics and decision making, we can actually say that, hey, this treestand in Castle Downs provides this much benefit for the community, you know?

Host: Right. Yeah. It kind of gives you language to talk about it.

Nicklas: Yeah.

Host: Kind of a way of packaging those ideas for increasing public acceptance?

Nicklas: Exactly, yeah.

Host: Okay. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. You talk in your paper about ecosystem service values.

Nicklas: Right.

Host: Can you tell me what those are?

Nicklas: Yeah so it ties back into having different stakeholders and they all value different types of ecosystems and, resultantly, different ecosystem services. So say you're a developer and you're developing a new neighborhood, right, in Edmonton or Calgary, and basically you want something that's going to help your business, that's going to help your development sell, that’s going to help you sell lots. So for you, ecosystem services that you would value are largely cultural. You would want features that you could advertise and sell, right? So if there is a stormwater pond with a really nice trail that you can bike on with trees and everything and people can appreciate nature, that's definitely something you're going to use as a selling feature. So you would want big trees really quickly and things that would attract people for that reason, or if there's a natural amenity, you would definitely advocate for that. If there's something that potentially doesn't benefit you in the business case, of course you do your cost benefit analysis, and if it doesn't make sense to retain a treestand because you could make way more money having lots, then obviously that's a trade off that developers consider.

When you're the City of Edmonton though, your priorities are a bit different, right? So you're looking at the stormwater pond in the case of flood mitigation, in the case of stormwater purification and other things like that. So you do value the cultural ecosystem services from it, of course you do, but there's other things that you are also looking at that the developer doesn't necessarily value per se. They would understand it because it's a part of regulation. So, yeah, that's basically what ecosystem service values are.

For example if like on like an individual level, if someone's really interested in camping or like going for walks or skateboarding, for them, a trail system through a natural area would be awesome, right? But if someone else is, say, more spiritual and then they like trees for another reason, right, for them like they have different sets of values. So they value that same ecosystem for a different purpose. It does get into the social sciences. Like there is this ecosystem that exists, and then different people based on their backgrounds would value it differently.

Host: Right. I can see that for sure.

Nicklas: Yeah.

Host: And from what you were saying, I can see how it might play into planning in that if the government's saying we need X many trees and developers are saying, oh well, it's cheaper to get rid of the trees–

Nicklas: Yeah.

Host: – then it might be important to put that into some kind of planning.

Nicklas: For sure.

Host: Do you want to talk about the other ways that ecosystem services interact with urban planning

Nicklas: Yeah, for sure. Basically what I studied is just understanding how ecosystem services implicitly– so, for example, if you're a planner at the City of Edmonton, you might not be thinking that oh, this land that we're taking as environmental reserve does provide all of these ecosystem services. You might not be thinking of the term ecosystem services, but in your head you are actually thinking about ecosystem services. So basically what we would call that is implicit, like an implicit understanding of ecosystem services, because– so council, right? When it goes to council, when it goes to administration, when the engineering department looks at it, when the planning department looks at it, when the developer looks at it, they all think of what benefit could this potentially provide if it was retained in the development? So those are really implicit ecosystem services that are influenced by the values of those stakeholders. So it does definitely play a part in decision making and urban planning, but the thing is that it's not necessarily always in the concept or framework of ecosystem services in academia how we would think of it, but it does exist. So that's really what I looked at is like, is it explicitly mentioned or is it implicitly mentioned?

Host: Is it important that it's explicitly mentioned?

Nicklas: Well, that's the thing. So when it is explicitly mentioned, it does put it into a framework that we can understand it holistically, so we're not just siloed in one understanding of what benefit this provides. We can see, like, the bigger picture of like there are regulating services, there are cultural services, there are like all these benefits, or there might not be the benefits, right? I'm not saying it would always be perfect. There are also ecosystem disservices. So for example, if you have a tree stand that's retained or a wetland that's retained, it could produce mosquitoes or ticks. So there are definitely drawbacks to every ecosystem approach, but of course it's a balancing act, right? So you would have to balance the ecosystem services with the disservices. And for some people, what an ecosystem service is could be a disservice for someone else. That's where ecosystem service values get really complicated.

Host: Yeah, that's really that's really interesting. I guess it's really important to have that language for the research part of it.

Nicklas: Exactly, yeah.

Host: Okay. Okay, that makes sense. Can you talk about what green infrastructure is?

Nicklas: Yes. So green infrastructure is in an urban environment, any living infrastructure, so any ecosystem I would just say, that provides ecosystem services to that community. The way the term came about in scholarship is in engineering the term infrastructure just refers to like pipes or roads and things like that. That would be termed as gray infrastructure as that they do provide services, right? So like storm water pipes, obviously water drains into them and then that's how our houses don't get flooded. That's a service. It is a gray engineering solution. So basically, where the term green infrastructure came from is that, hey, what if we use ecosystem based approaches to solve some of the problems we're seeing in urban environments? And so the whole idea is to use living infrastructure.

So like in the urban environment, different types of green infrastructure could be street trees, so that would be part of the urban forest. And as you know, in the City of Edmonton City Plan, it's really prioritized of planting an X number of trees until we get to the population of 2 million. So that is an example of green infrastructure. In our Alberta context definitely stormwater ponds and naturalizing those, constructed wetlands, creating those would be another example or retaining existing wetlands. Of course, there's challenges to both of those approaches that would be another podcast on its own.

So there are other approaches that I did look at in my research that aren't as common in Alberta. So that would be for example green roofs, which are gaining popularity in Toronto and other parts of Canada such as B.C. So that is an interesting approach. It really hasn't been widely uptaken here for climate reasons. But there's also other approaches such as rain gardens and biosoils, which are really common now in B.C. in the lower mainland and the island as well, which again haven't been that widely uptaken. There are a few examples, but not that many.

Host: So what did your research look at specifically?

Nicklas: Yeah. So in my research, I wanted to understand how ecosystem services values are implemented into urban planning and development, and how that translates to on the ground action. So I did pick 5 case study municipalities: That was the district of Saanich in B.C., right next to it was the city of Victoria. Those two kind of overlapped a lot because they are very interrelated and very close. They’re in the same region of course. There’s thirteen municipalities in that region, but these two are the main ones, of course, near the core. And then the city of Edmonton, city of Winnipeg and city of Fredericton. So I did try to get an east to west span of these municipalities throughout Canada and yeah, it was really interesting.

So I basically interviewed key stakeholders in these municipalities. So that included everyone from city planners to city engineers, consulting engineers, land developers, even counselors or watershed organizations. So I did try to get a wide perspective of different views and understandings of green infrastructure and ecosystem services. Basically what I was looking at is how does the ecosystem service values of these stakeholders influence the green infrastructure that is actually implemented into development on the ground? And so yeah, that's really what I looked at in my research.

Host: Interesting.

Nicklas: Yeah.

Host: Okay, so why did you choose those specific places?

Nicklas: Yeah, it's a good question. Canada is a vast country and then we have various biomes. So the research case studies that I picked were specifically intended to span a variety of biomes in Canada. So when you look at Victoria it is a very different temperate rainforest climate than Edmonton would be, which is a prairie city. But it is also in the transition area, like Aspen Parkland area of Alberta. It transitions between boreal to the north and then more grassland ecosystems to the South. Whereas Winnipeg is completely in the Prairie and it is very flat, not saying that Edmonton isn't, but it is a better example of a classic prairie city. And then Fredericton, of course, has a very different context of being located on a semi-tidal river and then also being in a forested context.

The reason I picked these five municipalities was because their contexts naturally were different and then also, from a development standpoint, they are very different. So as you know, Edmonton has had a lot of development pressures, a lot of growth in the past years, whereas Winnipeg in contrast has aging infrastructure, more sluggish development. There are bursts, but there are very quiet periods as well where there could be more development happening and everyone would like more development to happen to fund infrastructure replacement and stuff like that. So they are like very different contexts in terms of development.

And then Fredericton kind of course, it does have the potential for development and new development does occur in greenfield or infill realms, but it is of course different than Edmonton or Winnipeg in its context. And then the reason I picked Victoria and Saanich is because they're completely different. They don’t have any more land to develop on, so there’s very few greenfield development happening and most of the development is intensification and infill development. So it just gave like a different perspective of like how you can implement ecosystem services in a context where it's so heavily urbanized already.

Host: Absolutely.

Nicklas:Yeah.

Host: So what were some of your key findings?

Nicklas: Yeah. So the key findings were that different stakeholders definitely do have different ecosystem service values. And what I found when I was doing my literature review is that there's very little research that actually looks at developers. So there's a lot of research that was looking at the public agents and institutions. So that would be city planners, city engineers, other administrative people in the city, also elected officials from these cities, but there wasn't a lot of research that actually looked at the people who are actually driving the development, which is the developer. So that's really, I think that's one of the novelty of this research is that I definitely honed into that a bit more and understood where they're coming from as well. It's easy to categorize developers as you know they want to make money, and they're only in it for the profit, which is, I mean, that's definitely true, but they do have their values and that does influence how ecosystem services are implemented into the urban fabric. So we do have to understand that as well.

Through this research, I understood better how different stakeholders have different values. So even like when you compare planners, engineers and environmental professionals, you could throw them in it as well. They're all professionals, they all have a professional background, but the way they see ecosystems and the ecosystem services that come from that are different, of course, right? So like an engineer is looking at it from a technical lens, like if I do all the calculations, how much does this actually help you know? Whereas the planner is looking at it a bit more from the lens of, okay, it would help with flood mitigation. The engineer would calculate all of that, but like what are the other benefits? Like, does it integrate from like a walkability standpoint? Does it help create like a home or an idea of a community? Does it like provide a gathering place for people? So that's what planners are really thinking about. And then environmental professionals are obviously really thinking about the environmental implications and the benefits from that standpoint. So there is a wide variety of different values and they really do all get incorporated in to some extent.

The other key finding was that there is a difference between different green infrastructure that's implemented in different municipalities and it really comes down to their contexts. So for example, in Edmonton, new developments, if there is a really significant environmental feature, you would try to retain that. And then with stormwater management, it is a requirement for a developer to construct stormwater infrastructure to provincial and municipal standards. So there are larger areas to work with because we are developing full quarter sections and things like that. Whereas when you go to BC and Victoria and Saanich, there's not room to play. You don't have room to do a big stormwater pond, right? It requires developers and municipal professionals there to be very creative of how green infrastructure is implemented. And basically if you have any space, it should be used for green infrastructure purposes. So that’s really why you're seeing a lot of rain gardens and biosoils being developed in Victoria and Saanich is because there's so much space constraints. But of course we do want these features to be implemented. So yeah, that's really very interesting, seeing different approaches.

The other key finding I'll point out is when I compared Edmonton and Winnipeg, which you would think are very similar cities and they are, but when it comes to the governance standpoint of how this came about and the history of it, they're actually completely opposite. So in Winnipeg, it was actually the developers that championed, first of all, for the city to explore stormwater ponds in the first place. So that was way back in the 70's and 80's. And then secondly, in the early 2000's, it was actually the developers who had to advocate the city to implement naturalized approaches, so rather than a rocked edge, and mowed lawn around these stormwater ponds to try a more naturalized approach with native vegetation and wetland plants.

So it was actually, the developers that were championing it in Winnipeg and it took a while for the city to get on board. When they got on board, they understood the benefits like there's lower maintenance costs. Because the city was very concerned that it would go wrong like the pipes would clog up with all this algae or whatever but it was actually quite the opposite. If you have a lot of native vegetation, it reduces the likelihood of algal blooms. So there was actually less maintenance, but it took a while for them to see it. Whereas in Edmonton it was the opposite, so it was actually the city that championed these approaches and that the developer community was of course at first hesitant. Later they got on board, so at the end of the day you ended up in the same spot. But how you got there is completely different.

Host: Oh, that's so interesting!

Nicklas: I know!

Host: And I was going to ask too, if you felt like any one stakeholder group had more influence than any other. And I guess based on that, it's kind of a case by case basis.

Nicklas: Exactly.

Host: What did you find in the other municipalities?

Nicklas: For sure. With the other municipalities, when I was talking to developers in Victoria and Saanich, they definitely understood the value of it but at the end of the day, they did admit that their finances are very tight. So when it comes to making a profit for their investors on a given housing project, they do want to maximize their projects. So having to allocate land for rain gardens or biosoils and constructing all of that is definitely a cost for them. They understand why, they understand that it does make a nicer development, but at the end of the day, they do have to follow their regulations and that is what it is. They did comment on like there would be a point where, because as you know, BC does have a housing crisis, and then the more stuff we keep adding as requirements for new housing projects, the harder it becomes to make affordable housing basically, right? So like at the end of the day, the developer is required to add all of these features onto their housing projects, but that cost is then of course downloaded onto the person who's renting that place or would purchase it, right?

There are like a variety of perspectives based on the area, like in Fredericton it is a bit different because they don't necessarily have the same scale of development as you would have in Winnipeg or Edmonton, but there is that development and developers do work with the guidelines to create storm water pods and things like that. In Fredericton and Winnipeg as well, there's some concerns about floodplains and existing development on floodplains. So the City of Fredericton is actually being quite proactive and they're trying to purchase lands on floodplains so they don't get developed. And I think that's a really great approach. And once they do that, they work with the watershed organization in the area to basically restore that floodplain into its natural state, so it provides more ecosystem services. So that's very interesting. Yeah. There's definitely like lots of nuances in each of the communities I studied.

Host: Would you say that with the exception of maybe Winnipeg, that ecosystem services are generally operationalized by governments?

Nicklas: Yes, for sure. I would definitely say it's definitely more so championed by the government agencies and the government stakeholders. There are of course developers that do want to be innovative. So like in Edmonton, I did interview a few developers and they did note instances where they wanted to do double the required number of trees because for them it's a selling feature and they really want to sell this new community they were developing. It has a bunch of trees, it's like has really nice parks and then people would want to live there for that reason, right? Not necessarily that people would be like oh trees are so great. I want to live here, But they would see the parks and it just enhances the overall aesthetic. But then the City is concerned about maintaining all of these extra trees so they are concerned with the types of trees that are being planted, and how they would go about maintaining them. So in every municipality there were developers that did comment that they did have innovative ideas. It was just, it didn't fit within the municipal expectations and guidelines and that was an inhibiting factor for sure.

Host: So how can your findings be implemented?

Nicklas: I think one of the things we looked at was the municipal plans and seeing how ecosystem services were incorporated as a consideration in them. And in all of them they were incorporated implicitly and in some of them, two or three, they were explicitly incorporated as a concept. I know there's, a lot of people are skeptical, and especially in academia there are scholars that are skeptical of the ecosystem services approach. There is this ethical debate on are we exploiting ecosystems still by just looking at it from the lens of the benefit that we get from it? But my rebuttal to that would be it's better than nothing, right? So if there's a way you can convince someone that this ecosystem does have value and you could demonstrate that to them, I think we should be using this approach.

And then the other thing is that it really forces stakeholders to look at it more holistically. So like in my current work at Lacombe County, I did an area structure plan for industrial and commercial development west of the QE 2 highway, west of Lacombe and Blackfalds, and in that I explicitly incorporated an ecosystem services framework. So I put like the figure in right? And like the reason I did that, it's not necessarily that like, council’s got to sit there and like go oh yeah, look at all these, and they're gonna try to understand it and read it. It's really because for the reader, for the developer, whoever's looking at it to understand holistically, like, if there is a natural feature, an ecosystem in your proposed development area, it isn't necessary that it will be providing one or two benefits. There is a myriad of benefits that are being provided.

And so basically just by having that concept in there, that's just in the back of your mind, right, and that you are considering that. And that when you are doing an analysis as a planner and providing recommendations to council, these are things you can of course talk about, add to your council report that this development does have 5 acres of a really important wetland. And then you could kind of go into like just like even a sentence or two about the benefits of that wetland so they understand why it's being preserved in the development.

So I do think like the implications of this research are that there are benefits of an explicit ecosystem service framework and we did find that in the case studies we looked at in the municipalities that explicitly mentioned it. For example, the City of Edmonton or the City of Victoria, within administration and within council, there was a higher level of understanding of the benefits that ecosystems provide and then also more forward thinking approaches when it came to implementing them, yeah.

Host: Interesting. So it's almost a communications tool.

Nicklas: For sure. Yeah, exactly.

Host: How can others build off of this research?

Nicklas: I think there is definitely more knowledge gaps that emerge from any research that's done including this one. So like further research could definitely, of course I touched on the development side of it and the development industries views and things like that. A more thorough analysis could be done on the processes themselves and how development actually occurs getting into the policies and regulations of development. So that would be one area to look at that would like further hone in on different areas we could incorporate ecosystem services in and how the green infrastructure could be enhanced in our communities. So that's definitely an angle that there could be multiple papers coming out of that.

In terms of ecosystem service values we did look at key stakeholders. One thing that could be done is looking more broadly at community perspectives and what the community thinks in different parts of Canada and whether they value different things. Because I'm sure ecosystem services that someone would value in Edmonton or the community as a whole would differ than say, Vancouver. They are very different contexts. In Vancouver, you could just drive half an hour and go hiking, for example, right on a mountain, whereas here that's not necessarily something you could do. So what people value definitely differs based on their context, of course.

Host: Yeah, definitely. So before we wrap up, do you have any concluding thoughts or is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we didn't get to.

Nicklas: I think we covered everything, but in terms of concluding thoughts, I'd just say that it is very interesting to study ecosystem services in the context of Canadian cities because again, Canada is growing very fast. We are, if you look at per capita, one of the fastest growing countries in the Western world due to our high immigration numbers. So our cities are growing really fast. It's easy to say that hey, we need growth, we need to develop, we need housing, which is all true. We need all of those things but just think that what we're developing is permanent. There will be infill, there will be new buildings, but the overall layout of our communities, that's permanent. That's like done. So we really do need to think about how the future is going to look and what we're actually removing from our environment and how we can find ways to potentially keep ecosystem services within our communities for the benefit of future generations.

Host: Alright. Well, we're going to wrap up there, but thank you so much for joining me, Nick. If you'd like to know more about Nick's research, it's linked in the description. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, give us a like, comment and a follow to stay up to date with all of our latest podcast episodes. You can also follow us on , , , and . Thank you so much for listening to the Land Use Podcast.