Rural-urban relations and ecosystem services: an integrated framework for the São Paulo Macrometropoli

Author(s)

Bruno César Nascimento Portes

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Eletrotécnica e Energia (IEE/BT)
• Defense date: 2024-09-06

Examining board members

Paulo Antonio de Almeida Sinisgalli; Mateus Batistella; Vanessa Lucena Empinotti; Sueli Angelo Furlan; Pedro Roberto Jacobi; Ademar Ribeiro Romeiro

• Advisor: Paulo Antonio de Almeida Sinisgalli

Abstract

The ecosystem services (ES) approach has gained relevance in discussions on sustainability, both in terms of assessing their importance for human well-being and in terms of public policy. In predominantly urban regions such as the São Paulo MacroMetropolis (SPMM), this discussion highlights the need to think of ES as rural-urban flows that are essential for the sustainability of the system. However, the literature and planning instruments aimed at ES in the SPMM have an urban bias, which gives the rural a secondary, static and passive character to urban dynamics. This view fails to take into account contemporary rural dynamics and the complex interrelationships between these spaces in the territory. Added to this is a static view of ecosystem services. This view is limited to areas that provide ES, disregarding their dynamic and interconnected nature. In this way, this research aims to structure an integrated and dynamic framework for studying ecosystem services from a territorial approach, which takes into account the complexity of rural-urban relations in the SPMM. This framework is based on the territorial approach to planning, to which the concept of flows of ecosystem services is articulated through the analytical framework of telecoupling. This framework broadens the debate on ES in the SPMM, articulating theoretical and methodological tools that allow complex and spatially explicit analysis of the interdependencies between rural and urban spaces. In this way, it is hoped to advance the construction of knowledge and public policies aimed at the sustainability of ecosystem services in the SPMM in a systematic way in the face of the environmental challenge of resilience to climate change. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 19/22940-1 - Ecosystem services potentials in the urban-rural gradient of the macrometropolis of São Paulo: a multidimensional theoretical-methodological approach
• Grantee: Bruno César Nascimento Portes
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate