Indicators for Management of Urban Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: City Biodiversity Index

Capturing the status and trends of biodiversity and ecosystem services in urban landscapes represents an important part of understanding whether a metropolitan area is developing along a sustainable trajectory or not. However, this task also represents unique challenges for policy makers and scientists alike, challenges that lie at both the methodological (scaling, boundaries, definitions) and institutional levels (integrating biodiversity and ecosystems with social and economic goals). In this chapter we report on the experiences from municipalities in several countries where the newly developed City Biodiversity Index (CBI) has been applied and tested. The purpose here is not to compare or rank different municipalities but rather to deepen our understanding of the science underlying the indicators and contribute improvements to the CBI in different contexts. Based on experiences in implementing the CBI in 14 cities in Japan, and in Lisbon (Portugal), Helsinki (Finland), Mira Bhainder (India) and Edmonton (Canada) it is evident that the CBI has limitations that need to be addressed: (1) lack of data and the scale and boundaries need careful consideration, (2) the scoring represents a challenge as the bio-geographical differences or the profile of the cities varies largely, (3) the number and scope of ecosystems captured are limited and a broader range of ecosystem services should be included, and (4) the integrated social-ecological dimension of cities needs further development. However, it is also evident that CBI has some unique features, and can perhaps most importantly serve as both a tool that brings managers, scientists and other stakeholders together to act on the role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the cities as well as a tool for assessing the impacts of different policies and land planning options on urban biodiversity.