Perceptions and knowledge of ecosystem services in urban river systems, Eastern Cape, South Africa

Abstract

The ecosystem services concept has been studied in rural contexts but not as much in urban landscapes, particularly aquatic ecosystems in Africa. This means we have little knowledge of how urban populations perceive ecosystem services (ES) supplied by rivers in urban centres. To fill this gap, this paper assesses local people’s perceptions and knowledge of ecosystem services supplied by rivers in urban centres using the Swartkops River in the Nelson Mandela Bay metropolitan area in the Eastern Cape as a case study. The survey results indicated variation in the extent people felt the river provided a variety of services. There was almost universal agreement that the river never provides freshwater which likely reflects high levels of pollution in the river. An interesting aspect of the model results were differences in results related to the importance of conceptual and experiential knowledge of ES. For provisioning services, like recreation, experiential knowledge of the river was more important than conceptual knowledge, whereas for intangible ES such a regulating services, conceptual knowledge was important than experiential knowledge.