The concept of Ecosystem services was developed mainly in the 1980’s, but one of the most important milestones in that process was publication of Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005 which divided ecosystem services into four different types: provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting. Ecosystem services are being degraded in many cases all over the world. Integrating the concept into the planning process may help to improve this situation. Sweden and Stockholm have long tradition in spatial planning, but there is still a lot to improve when it comes to sustainable management of ecosystem services. One of the reasons is that there is a lack of holistic perspective in planning and systems thinking might be a tool to decrease this deficiency. The aim of the project is to identify the most representative and significant ecosystems in Stockholm County and explain the dynamics within the system of maintenance of ecosystem services on the both regional and local level of planning in Stockholm County. The research has been conducted using literature review as well as semistructured interviews with the most significant stakeholders who are involved in physical planning in Stockholm County both on regional and municipal level. During the interviews five Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) where developed. The study concludes that four most representative ecosystems in Stockholm County are: Lake Mälaren, Local green structures, Green wedges and Rural areas. They provide various types of ecosystem services, but the most important and strategic ones seem to be regulating and cultural types since they were the ones easily (and in biggest number listed by the interviewees). The research furthermore concludes that the biggest threats for the identified ecosystems are connected with development of the County, growing population and pressure from the building industry as well as the climate change. Physical planning in Stockholm County has the opportunity to counteract these threats by implementing the concept of ecosystem services planning process and due to collaborative work between municipalities. It is also important to distinguish between ecosystem services per se and what is a requirement for the provision of ecosystem services. In the future this qualitative research could be supplemented with a more detailed/quantitative studies which would contribute to better estimation the results of different planning decisions and include the money factor which have not been researched in this study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-189947 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Płuciennik, Fryderyk |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för naturgeografi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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