ADEPT: developing the ecosystem approach to drive positive urban transformations in the context of intersecting vulnerabilities

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity promotes using an ecosystems approach (EA) to support the delivery of ecosystem services and benefits (ESB) as a dynamic conceptualisation of environmental quality. It is promoted as enabling an easier integration of environmental goods and services into economic processes and policies. However, many researchers suggest that an EA is 'science in the making' and emerging policy initiatives overlook complexities that stem from both uncertain scientific underpinnings and socio-economic divisions. These include gender divisions and inequalities, yet these topics are largely absent from ESB discussions. While feminist writers (and others) suggest caution with adopting an EA, ADEPT seeks to explore if and how the approach could be useful for promoting wellbeing for women and men. While environmental justice scholars have long suggested that socio-economic hardship and the distribution of environmental goods and bads are correlated, recent applications of intersectional theory suggest that practical experiences of exclusion from opportunity always intermesh with other divisions such as those based on race, social class, disability status, sexuality, age and geographical location. There is then a need to address environmental and socio-economic vulnerability in an integrated manner. To do so an EA needs to first address a binary exclusion; firstly, there is a need to highlight ways in which ESB frame environmental quality, often affording stronger representation to expert interpretation of how environmental quality is experienced. Secondly, there is need to understand how intersecting vulnerabilities influence access to a range of ESB (with a focus on those linked to urban blue-green space e.g. clean water, flood mitigation and recreational opportunities).

The focus of the current research will be a major urban zoning project in Belo Horizonte (BH), which covers a range of land-use types from dense low-income urban districts to rich gated neighbourhoods, protected areas, commercial and industrial districts. This provides an ideal case study area in which to trial and extend understandings of gendered vulnerability to environmental change within local urban contexts. Research to be undertaken will involve identifying socio-economic and environmental vulnerabilities and zones of interaction, exploration of differential experiences of urban ESB and scoping the potential of these as a means to support poverty alleviation in urban transformations. Results from BH will also be discussed within a Sao Paulo (SP) context, through the involvement of field researchers from SP currently involved in a local community engagement project involving the redevelopment of urban water management policies.

The research collaboration is organised around a series of four international research workshops. An online research community will support the combination and interrogation of both new and existing data sets and development of new evidence of the processes which underpin urban vulnerability, forming the context within which any resilience solutions would need to be derived.

ADEPT is a collaboration and research project exploring and developing the potential of the Ecosystems Approach (EsA) for deriving sustainable outcomes in the context of the current complex and accelerating urban transformations. The innovative and internationally-relevant research partnership collaboratively developed by all partners contributes to the economic development and welfare of Brazil at both a:
* sector level - enabling a more nuanced understanding of the interactions between socio-economic and environmental vulnerabilities to be developed and understanding of how this may be integrated within planning and policy processes
* country level - supporting the development of a long-term Brazil-UK partnership with the necessary multiple skill sets to participate in the global urban transformation arena

It uses emerging UK research to support key poverty and development issues already being explored by Brazilian partners to be viewed through alternative lenses generating novel understandings of a global relevance. The main impact of ADEPT is therefore in the provision of a platform of communication for the involved academics, enabling interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and understanding and for development of a closer network between the involved UK and Brazilian partners for the purpose of further research bids. The resulting academic outputs will consist of a minimum of two co-authored peer reviewed papers that will also be presented in conference fora. ADEPT will trial and validate a mobile phone app for data collection on ecosystem services, goods and benefits (ESBs) and produce guidance on avoiding a gender bias in the application of the EsA approach to the management of urban transformations. Users of these outputs are planning and policy officials from local and national administrations in Brazil and the UK. In addition to academic conferences and papers, findings will be disseminated at a local to international scale through an on-line community, which includes direct involvement of policy developers, planners, community representatives and academics. ADEPT field work funded by CONFAP will involve community members directly, providing the disadvantage community in Belo Horizonte an opportunity to contribute and learn from the research process.