What personal and environmental factors determine frequency of urban greenspace use?

For many people, urban greenspaces are the only places where they encounter the natural world. This is concerning as there is growing evidence demonstrating that human well-being is enhanced by exposure to nature. There is, therefore, a compelling argument to increase how frequently people use urban greenspaces. This may be achieved in two complementary ways by encouraging: (I) non-users to start visiting urban greenspaces; (II) existing users to visit more often. Here we examine the factors that influence frequency of greenspace visitation in the city of Sheffield, England. We demonstrate that people who visit a site least frequently state lower self-reported psychological well-being. We hypothesised that a combination of socio-demographic characteristics of the participants, and the biophysical attributes of the greenspaces that they were visiting, would be important in influencing visit frequency. However, socio-demographic characteristics (income, age, gender) were not found to be predictors. In contrast, some biophysical attributes of greenspaces were significantly related to use frequency. Frequent use was more likely when the time taken to reach a greenspace was shorter and for sites with a higher index of greenspace neglect, but were unrelated to tree cover or bird species richness. We related these results to the motivations that people provide for their visits. Infrequent users were more likely to state motivations associated with the quality of the space, while frequent users gave motivations pertaining to physical, repeated activities. This suggests that there may be no simple way to manage greenspaces to maximise their use across user cohorts as the motivations for visits are very different

IMPACTS OF POLICY REFORM ON SUSTAINABILITY OF HILL FARMING IN UK BY MEANS OF BIO-ECONOMIC MODELLING

Hill farming in UK is experiencing very difficult economic circumstances and many farmers rely on subsidies provided by the government for a large fraction of their income. The Peak District National Park is used as a case study to examine how farmers might respond to current policy changes � in particular, the move from area- and headage-based payments to the Single Farm Payment, and how optimal business plans should respond to these changes. The objective of this paper is thus to develop production models that predict how farmers will respond to changing policy framework conditions. For this purpose socio-economic surveys were carried out on 44 sample farms, in order to investigate how the land is managed on hill farms including ongoing policies and future farm management planning. Based on these surveys a series of representative farm linear programming models was developed, which represent typical farm types in the uplands in the Peak District. In this study the focus is on typical sheep and beef farm type, the most common in this region. This model is used to calculate the effect of different policies, carried out under CAP reform, on incomes, land use and the intensity of production. We also consider the impacts of a complete removal of subsidy.CAP reform, Single Farm Payment, hill farming, linear programming model, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use,

Contrasting Distributions of Urban Green Infrastructure across Social and Ethno-racial Groups

Links between urban green infrastructure (UGI) and public health benefits are becoming well established. Despite this, how UGI is distributed varies widely. Although not a universal finding, sectors of society that are disadvantaged often suffer from poor provision, something which might be due to which UGI are examined. We assess the distribution of street trees and public greenspaces (two types of publicly-owned and accessible UGI) across the city of Bradford, UK which is characterised by high levels of inequality and variation in ethno-racial background. We do this through statistical and spatial analyses. Street tree density was distributed unevenly and was highest in neighbourhoods with a high proportion of Asian/Asian British residents and with lower socio-economic status. Conversely, neighbourhoods with better access to public greenspaces were characterised by high income and/or a high proportion of White households. While the quality of public greenspace was spatially clustered, there were only limited spatial associations with ethno-racial group or socio-economic status. Population density was a key determinant of the distribution of UGI, suggesting understanding UGI distributions should also focus on urban form. Nevertheless, within the same city we show that equitable distribution of UGI differs according to the form and characteristics of UGI. To fully realise the public health benefits of UGI, it is necessary to map provision and understand the causal drivers of unequal distributions. This would facilitate interventions that promote equitable distributions of UGI based on the needs of the target populations

Can REDD+ help the conservation of restricted-range island species?:insights from the endemism hotspot of São Tomé

REDD+ aims to offset greenhouse gas emissions through “Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation”. Some authors suggest that REDD+ can bring additional benefits for biodiversity, namely for the conservation of extinction-prone restricted-range species. Here, we assess this claim, using São Tomé Island (Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe) as a case study. We quantified the abundance of bird and tree species, and calculated the aboveground carbon stocks across a gradient of land-use intensity. We found a strong spatial congruence between carbon and the presence and abundance of endemic species, supporting the potential of REDD+ to protect these taxa. We then assessed if REDD+ could help protect the forests of São Tomé and Príncipe. To do so, we used OSIRIS simulations to predict country-level deforestation under two different REDD+ designs. These simulations showed that REDD+ could promote the loss of forests in São Tomé and Príncipe through leakage. This happened even when additional payments for biodiversity were included in the simulations, and despite São Tomé and Príncipe having the fourth highest carbon stocks per land area and the second highest biodiversity values according to the OSIRIS database. These results show weaknesses of OSIRIS as a planning tool, and demonstrate that the benefits that REDD+ might bring for biodiversity are strongly dependent on its careful implementation. We recommend that payment for ecosystem services programmes such as REDD+ develop safeguards to ensure that biodiversity co-benefits are met and perverse outcomes are avoided across all tropical countries. In particular, we advise specific safeguards regarding the conservation of extinction-prone groups, such as island restricted-range species

The role of community acceptance in planning outcomes for onshore wind and solar farms: An energy justice analysis

The deployment of renewable technologies as part of climate mitigation strategies have provoked a range of responses from various actors, bringing public acceptance to the forefront of energy debates. A key example is the reaction of communities when renewable projects are proposed in their local areas. This paper analyses the effect that community acceptance has had on planning applications for onshore wind and solar farms in Great Britain between 1990 and 2017. It does this by compiling a set of indicators for community acceptance and testing their association with planning outcomes using binomial logistic regression. It identifies 12 variables with statistically significant effects: 4 for onshore wind, 4 for solar farms, and 4 spanning both. For both technologies, the visibility of a project, its installed capacity, the social deprivation of the area, and the year of the application are significant. The paper draws conclusions from these results for community acceptance and energy justice, and discusses the implications for energy decision-making

The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems: motivations, challenges, and applications

Abstract In response to growing demand for ecosystem-level risk assessment in biodiversity conservation, and rapid proliferation of locally tailored protocols, the IUCN recently endorsed new Red List criteria as a global standard for ecosystem risk assessment. Four qualities were sought in the design of the IUCN criteria: generality; precision; realism; and simplicity. Drawing from extensive global consultation, we explore trade-offs among these qualities when dealing with key challenges, including ecosystem classification, measuring ecosystem dynamics, degradation and collapse, and setting decision thresholds to delimit ordinal categories of threat. Experience from countries with national lists of threatened ecosystems demonstrates well-balanced trade-offs in current and potential applications of Red Lists of Ecosystems in legislation, policy, environmental management and education. The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems should be judged by whether it achieves conservation ends and improves natural resource management, whether its limitations are outweighed by its benefits, and whether it performs better than alternative methods. Future development of the Red List of Ecosystems will benefit from the history of the Red List of Threatened Species which was trialed and adjusted iteratively over 50 years from rudimentary beginnings. We anticipate the Red List of Ecosystems will promote policy focus on conservation outcomes in situ across whole landscapes and seascapes

Patriotic values for public goods: transnational trade-offs for biodiversity and ecosystem services?

The natural environment is central to human well-being through its role in ecosystem service (ES) provision. Managing ES often requires coordination across international borders. Although this may deliver greater conservation gains than countries acting alone, we do not know whether the public supports such an international approach. Using the same questionnaire in three countries, we quantified public preferences for ES in home countries and across international borders. In all three countries, the people were generally willing to pay for ES. However, our results show that there is a limit to the extent that environmental goods can be considered global. ES with a use element (habitat conservation, landscape preservation) attracted a patriotic premium, such that the people were willing to pay significantly more for locally delivered services. Supranational management of ES needs to be balanced against the preferences that people have for services delivered in their home countries

Shifting baseline syndrome: causes, consequences and implications

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.With ongoing environmental degradation at local, regional, and global scales, people's accepted thresholds for environmental conditions are continually being lowered. In the absence of past information or experience with historical conditions, members of each new generation accept the situation in which they were raised as being normal. This psychological and sociological phenomenon is termed shifting baseline syndrome (SBS), which is increasingly recognized as one of the fundamental obstacles to addressing a wide range of today's global environmental issues. Yet our understanding of this phenomenon remains incomplete. We provide an overview of the nature and extent of SBS and propose a conceptual framework for understanding its causes, consequences, and implications. We suggest that there are several self‐reinforcing feedback loops that allow the consequences of SBS to further accelerate SBS through progressive environmental degradation. Such negative implications highlight the urgent need to dedicate considerable effort to preventing and ultimately reversing SBS.MS was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant no. 16K00631), and KJG by the Natural Environment Research Council (grant no. NE/J015237/1)

Effects of recycled aggregate growth substrate on green roof vegetation development: a six year experiment

Green roofs have the potential to address several of the environmental problems associated with urbanisation, and can be used as mitigation for habitats lost at ground level. Brown roofs (a type of green roof) can be used to mitigate for the loss of brownfield habitat, but the best way of designing these habitats remains unclear. This paper reports an experiment to test the effects of different types of recycled aggregate on the development of vegetation assemblages on brown roof mesocosms. Five recycled aggregates were tested: (1) crushed brick, (2) crushed demolition aggregate, (3) solid municipal waste incinerator bottom ash aggregate, (4) a 1:1 mix of 1 and 2, and (5) a 1:1 mix of 3 and 2. Each was seeded with a wildflower mix that also included some Sedum acre and vegetation development was studied over a six-year period. Species richness, assemblage character, number of plants able to seed, and plant biomass were measured. Drought disturbance was the key factor controlling changes in plant assemblage, but effects varied with substrate treatment. All treatments supported a similar plant biomass, but treatments with a high proportion of crushed brick in the growth substrate supported richer assemblages, with more species able to seed, and a smaller amount of Sedum acre. Crushed brick, or recycled aggregates with a high proportion of crushed brick, are recommended as good growth substrate materials for encouraging brown roof plant diversity. This investigation demonstrates the importance of multi-year studies of green roof development for the generation of robust findings