A Review of Urban Ecosystem Services Research in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Urban blue-green spaces hold immense potential for supporting the sustainability and liveability of cities through the provision of urban ecosystem services (UES). However, research on UES in the Global South has not been reviewed as systematically as in the Global North. In Southeast Asia, the nature and extent of the biases, imbalances and gaps in UES research are unclear. We address this issue by conducting a systematic review of UES research in Southeast Asia over the last twenty years. Our findings draw attention to the unequal distribution of UES research within the region, and highlight common services, scales and features studied, as well as methods undertaken in UES research. We found that while studies tend to assess regulating and cultural UES at a landscape scale, few studies examined interactions between services by assessing synergies and tradeoffs. Moreover, the bias in research towards megacities in the region may overlook less-developed nations, rural areas, and peri-urban regions and their unique perspectives and preferences towards UES management. We discuss the challenges and considerations for integrating and conducting research on UES in Southeast Asia based on its unique and diverse socio-cultural characteristics. We conclude our review by highlighting aspects of UES research that need more attention in order to support land use planning and decision-making in Southeast Asia.

Landscape-scale Remote Sensing and Classification of Pond and Lake Habitat Diversity in a Tropical City

“…To date, almost no attention has been given to how best to address the challenge of surveying urban wetlands. Furthermore, our methods can address data and research gaps in Global South countries (Oertli and Parris, 2019), which are often data poor, with small urban ponds not commonly captured in existing land cover datasets and/or those datasets may be out of date due to the rapid pace of urbanisation in the global south (Farrell, 2017;Lourdes et al, 2021). While in the Global North, medium-large urban ponds may already be captured in existing topographical maps which are typically at produced at much higher spatial resolutions.…”

“…Assessments are critical in cities in the Global South, because the rapid pace of development is driving pond loss, eroding diversity and threatening ecosystem service provision to degrees not currently seen in urban areas in the Global North. Furthermore, research on urban ponds in countries in the Global South is underrepresented in the academic literature (Oertli and Parris, 2019) and urban ponds may be overlooked by decision makers as these countries are often data poor (Farrell, 2017;Lourdes et al, 2021;Teo et al, 2020a).…”

Urban Ecosystem Services: Current Knowledge, Gaps, and Future Research

“…The structure of this article is to look at the current knowledge-base, point out gaps, and summarize future research findings within the dimension of UES. Lourdes et al [6] point out that research on UES in the Global South has not been extensively examined as it has been in the Global North. To address this issue, they conducted a systematic literature review of UES in Southeast Asia over a two-decade period [6].…”

“…Lourdes et al [6] point out that research on UES in the Global South has not been extensively examined as it has been in the Global North. To address this issue, they conducted a systematic literature review of UES in Southeast Asia over a two-decade period [6]. Their findings emphasize the region's unequal distribution of UES research and highlight common services, scales, and characteristics examined, as well as methodologies used [6].…”

“…To address this issue, they conducted a systematic literature review of UES in Southeast Asia over a two-decade period [6]. Their findings emphasize the region's unequal distribution of UES research and highlight common services, scales, and characteristics examined, as well as methodologies used [6]. They identified that while most research analyze regulatory and cultural UES at a landscape scale, few studies looked at interconnections between services by evaluating synergies and tradeoffs [6].…”