Sustaining urban ecosystem services with local stewards participation in Stockholm (Sweden)

Urban ecosystems are becoming increasingly important as nodes of interaction between humans and nature. Sustainable management of urban ecosystems is therefore a crucial issue that needs to be analysed. The aim of this paper is to explore if adaptive co-management may be a viable approach for managing ecosystem resilience of a biodiversity-rich urban landscape in Stockholm, called the National Urban Park. Adaptive co-management is an integrative and place-specific approach that focuses on creating functional feedback loops between social and ecological systems. A social-ecological inventory based on multiple forms of qualitative data reveals that there are twenty-four local steward associations linked to ecosystem services, like air filtration, recreation, pollination, seed dispersal, delivered to the Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University, S-10691 Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail: [email protected]