Quantifying ecosystem services in a tropical city
At the Natural Capital Symposium, Dr Daniel Richards explains why the difference in climate, demographics and cultural associations with nature in the tropics calls for a tailored assessment of natural capital.
Cities in tropical Asia have different climates and demographics to those in North America and Europe, and their residents have different cultural associations with nature. When analysing the natural capital of tropical Asian cities, the geographic specificities of demand for ecosystem services, and the potential to provide them, should be taken into consideration.
At the external page Natural Capital Symposium 2019 at Stanford University, Dr Daniel Richards, principal investigator of the Natural Capital Singapore project, presented at the Nature in Cities Roundtable. In his talk "Natural Capital Singapore: quantifying ecosystem services in a tropical city", he highlighted some issues in quantifying natural capital in tropical Asian cities, with particular reference to Singapore - a prosperous city-state that has rapidly urbanised over the past 60 years.
Singapore has lost considerable areas of mangrove and secondary forest, but has simultaneously created extensive areas of park and managed urban vegetation. The relative performance of different ecosystems in providing services has not been quantified, making it difficult for urban planners to design urban landscapes that make the best of nature.
Dr Richards explains how the Natural Capital Singapore project, funded by Singapore's National Research Foundation, under the external page CREATE programme, could inform ecosystem service planning. The team has undertaken the first assessment of natural capital in Singapore by mapping the current state of ecosystems, and quantifying the benefits that they provide to people. The project will synthesise existing ecological knowledge and develop new methods to model and map the benefits of ecosystems.
The outcomes of the project will include a report on Singapore’s natural capital to help guide policy, as well as an interactive digital planning tool. The tool will help urban planners, developers, and architects to visualise data on the benefits of ecosystems, as well as simulate the impacts of new designs. With more accurate information on the impacts of urban developments, planners will be better equipped to select designs which bring the greatest benefits from ecosystems.