Recognising peri-urban ecosystem services in urban development policy and planning: A framework for assessing agri-ecosystem services, poverty and livelihood dynamics

Peri-urban ecosystem services (ES) play a vital role in the health and livelihoods of urban and peri-urban residents, but have received relatively little attention in the literature to date. Here we focus on agriculture-related peri-urban ecosystem services in south Asia: examining the relationships with multiple dimensions of poverty, and cross-scale interactions that affect the livelihoods and well-being of both urban and peri-urban residents across city regions. We present a novel analytical framework to reveal the dynamics of ES, poverty and livelihood interactions in rapidly urbanising contexts. Our framework adapts concepts from three complementary literatures and augments these with insights from our long-term empirical research in peri-urban India. We demonstrate the iterative development and operationalisation of this framework through an in-depth case study of the peri-urban village of Karhera in Ghaziabad, India. Transdisciplinary field research was carried out between 2014 and 2016 and involved a household census, in-depth interviews and participatory mapping exercises with peri-urban agricultural communities; alongside policy process analysis, and interviews and workshops with government officials, representatives from civil society organisations and other policy stakeholders. The analysis demonstrates how the wider political economy, associated peri-urban transformations and changes in urban consumer’ demand have multiple interacting impacts on agri-ecosystems, and how the ES derived from agri-ecosystems are accessed and utilised in diverse livelihood. We highlight specific drivers and processes of urbanisation that impact on the value and management of ecosystems, and the distinctive political, institutional, and socio-economic characteristics of peri-urban transformations that influence ES-poverty interactions. Our framework supports an enhanced understanding of the implications of mainstream development trajectories and governance arrangements for peri-urban ES and for the health and livelihoods of diverse stakeholders in the city regions that depend upon them. In doing so it draws attention to the potential to build synergies between environmental, poverty and health objectives.