Resisting climate change: Using provisioning services to increase resilience

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Nancy Grimm and Stephen R. Elser, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, Caitlyn Rickman, Berea College, Berea, KY

Background/Question/Methods
In the spring of 2017, the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network conducted a series of workshops aimed at identifying areas of urban life that city stakeholders wanted to see changes in to better prepare for upcoming climate challenges. One aspect of increasing resilience that surfaced during the workshops includes the implementation of Urban Ecological Infrastructure (UEI). UEI are parts of a city that support ecological structures and functions (Childers et al, 2019). Since UEI serve an ecological function, they are also inherently connected to ecosystem services: the benefits that people get from the environment that improve human well-being (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). This idea also interfaces with the famous hierarchy of needs developed by Abraham Maslow in 1943, where human needs are ranked in order of what most motivates behavior. The bottom of this hierarchy is more motivational than the upper tiers, and includes things like food, water, and shelter - all things that come from a wide array of ecosystem services.
The objective of this research is to explore the presence of provisioning services in this scenario's data, given its link to Maslow’s hierarchy. The hypothesis was that in cities with scenarios where improving human well-being overall had been identified as a goal, the UEI strategies would aim to improve equitable access to provisioning ecosystem services (factors that produce food, water, fiber, and fuel). In an initial comparison of cities with these scenarios involved in the workshop series, results in Phoenix, AZ and New York, NY, support the hypothesis. These cities had a higher focus on provisioning services than other types of services that provide regulating (factors affecting climate, floods, disease, waste, and water purification), cultural (factors that provide recreation, spiritual or aesthetic value), or supporting services (factors that promote soil formation, photosynthesis, and nutrient cycling).
Results/Conclusions
However, changes did arise within the general makeup of services, which could be attributed to the specific focus of each workshop. New York focused specifically on self reliance and decentralization, and mentioned several times the importance of offsetting disproportionate effects of climate change on lower and working class people. Services suggested in this group were overwhelmingly provisional (84%), with no mention of supporting services throughout. Phoenix had a much more diverse makeup, because the scenarios here mentioned everything from transportation to equity to cultural restoration. This accounts for the regulating services (32%) nearly equaling the provisioning services (36%) for this city.