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    11 URBAN FORESTRY AND AGROFORESTRY Fabio Salbitano,' Simone Borelli? and Giovanni Sanesi> 2 F009 AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS 40) Introdu n Today, cities already house world continues to urb: ost 4 billion people (United Nations 2014). As the ie, sustainable development challenges will be increa~ ingly concentrated in cities, pariculaaly lower- and middle-income countries While cities occupy less than 4% of the el {for 80% of carbon emissions, 60% of residential water use and over 75% I surface, ¢ use for industrial and domestic purposes. Urbanization is increasingly reganded as 2 critical process in the fame of global change and integrated policies to improve the lives of both urban and rural dweller, wisich are urgently needed The expansion of cities leads to the “urbanization of poverty” Baker 2008), Twenty-five percent is total poor live in cities (Ravallion et al, 2007). ‘Many of them live in te be higher than its big « the risk of & poverty, is F the cities and towns where the incidence of poverty tends ies Baker 2008). Urban poverty and valnersb Jated to thive characteristics of urban life sand social fa access to rexources and c tion (Alkize et al. 2014). This urbanization of poverty is an imcreasing concern for rutrition, water and energy security are essential for the livelhhood and quality of lie lof citizens: urban (ageo-) foresters ate looking for new sol ficient However, urban forestry can also conteibure to che quality of life and ‘environment of existing snd fatuze cities by addressing other challenges that have emerged during the last decade: climate change, soil sealing, human health and wel: bring and intggreted environmental govemance Th 2005, Konijnendijk and Gauthier (2006) prepared an averview of the status ‘of urban forestry research and development, policy-making, implementation and education, This chapter provides an overview of the developments in the last decision-makers: 286 Fabio Salbitano etal decade and the current status of (intr and peri-) urban forestry research and development, policy-making, implementation and education, and aims to demon state the dynamic statue of the discipline and highlight emerging experiences and Gro \g attention for urban forestry One of the most interesting facts of the 2005-2014 decade concerning urban forestry and agroforestry issues is the exponential growth of knowledge, action esearch and practice on green infastnature and ecosystem series approaches 38 means to enhance the quality of Ie in cities and towns. A lot of work bas gone into methodologies, technical issues, communication and education, multidisciplinary approaches and synergies "The volume of studies focusing on urban forestry has grown substantially: over the past 15 years (1998 to 2014), the scientific contributions containing the key word ban forest have increased more than four times (Figure 11.1) and include studies fom all continents ‘Three international journals mainly cover urban forestry: Urban Forestry and Urban Greening; Arboricultural Journal; and Arboriculture and Urban Forestry, Research, findings are also published in other journals, ¢g,, Landscape and Urban Planing. ‘The International Union of Forestry Research Organisation (UFRO) promotes conferences and sessions on urban forestry. At the last IUFRO World Conference in October 2014 in Salt Lake City, $8 papers and posters on urban landscape and 8 3745, 8 2661 1636 856 > 1998-2002 20022006 -—=20062010 © 20102014 year of ocumets 8b BR EE FIGURE 11.1 Number of documents on urban forestry and related issues an scientific publications from 1998 to 2014 Shc: woescop. ct. Urban forestry and agroforestry 287 urban forest issues were presented. Many other conferences, workshops and research projects a diferent lovels refer to urban forests and urban green infrastructure. Indeed, urban forestry and agroforestry are no longer only domains for experts bat are now well rooted ia the knowledge of many urban communities and in the capacity of technical and institutional boards. In the last ten years, whan forestry has become more and moze attractive for investments and for urban policy and strategic frameworks. ‘The 2007 State ofthe Wirld Forts (FAC. 2007) selected usban forestry a8 one of the Key sues related to estoration of the forex landscape and reported that 45 caus teies have stepped up afforestation efforts srouad towns with the primary objective fof envitonmental protection, to level of nearly 400,000 hectares per yeue ‘The State ofthe World Cities 2013 repost (UN-Habitat 2013) ox “Sustainability and the Prosperity of Cities” clearly points out the important role of urban green spaces as a provider of ecosystem services and a fundamental resource for the ‘etizen livelihoods “The World Heakth Report of 2013 (WHO 2013) highlights the positive role of green economy and green investments on che staras of health sn urban contexts Since 1960, the World Health Organization (WHO) has promoted the adoption of 4 set of indicators and guidelines for Healthy Urban Environments, The WHO Note of Secretariat of 1967 on “The challenge to public health of urbanization reports the need of setting minimum standards for healthy urban envizonments ‘Among them isthe need of indicators for the density of, and accessibility to, urban green spaces, Although no official records of WHO ever mention a minimum green space area per resident, the figre of 9 m* per resident is generally accepted as being proposed by WHO (Singh et al. 2010 quoting Kucheimeister 1998), and many national lws have adopted the square meters per urban resident asa criterion for urban dewlopment. That isthe case of the Ttlian lw on new urban development (DM. 2 April 1968, n, 1444), which adopted 9 m? of green space asa standard. Several international institutions, such as FAO, UN-HABITAT and UNEP, have promoted and sustained institutional a well as informal partnership and network~ ing on wrban foresury at global, egional and national level. The FAO Multdis- aiplinary Action Group "Food for the Cities” ako includes an action area on Forests and trees — smproving livehoods through healthy green cities Since the late nineties, the RUAF Foundation (the International network of Resource centres on Urban Agriculture and Food security) ie actively promoting and suttaining actions and guidelines for development at global (wwwruaf org/ topics/urban-agro-forestry) and regional levels. ICLELLocal Governments for Sustainability and United Cities and Local Gov cernments (UCLG) have been very active at regional and local levels to support the dialogue and the partnerships on urban forestry and green infrastructure. ICLEI and. UCLG-Africa supported UN-Habitat in the preparation of the State of Affcan Cities 2014 (UN-Habitat 2014), which included various aspects of urban forests and green infrastructure, Acconding (o this review, there i a strong need for building solid partnerships among African cities to build capacity and exchange knowledge 3¢ well 8 to attract Gnancial support for the iamplementation of urban forestry 288 Fabio Salbitano etal ‘The European Forum of Urban Forestry, launched in 1998, constitutes a robust example of regional networking and partnership. There are proposals to build similar experiences in Ada (FAO 20148) and Latin America (FAO 20143) In 2012, Silva Mediterranea, FAQ's statutory body on the forests of the Medi- terranean, launched a working group on Urban and Peri-urbsan Forest (www. org/forestry/80480/en/) that now is operating to create networking, partnership, knowledge and research/education opportunities in the region, City twinning programmes, implemented in many diferent contexts, are other took for networking and capacity building. ‘The Lombardy Region (Raly), one of the most urbanized azeas in Euzope, and the Ostedajeslovenska ~ Ljubljana urban region in Slovenia ~ twinned their efforts and experiences to monitor intra and peri-usban forests and the goods and secvices they provide (wwweemonfurew/). In May 2014, the "50 Municipal Climate Parterships by 2015” project was launched Fifty German municipalities and their partner municipalities in the Global South, ‘will develop joint action programmes on climate charge mitigation and adaptation in city regions including resilience, biodiversity, reforestation, energy supply, solid waste ‘management, water management, awareness raising and education (wwwservice- cine-weltcle/en/climatepartnerships/climstepartnerships-stat htm}. ‘The development and institutionalization of urban forestry in the United States gained force as a result of major lobbying efforts by NGOs such as American Forests, Tree Link and ICLEI-USA, ‘The “Urban Forests Create Vibrant Citi programme (wwwicleiusa.org/blog/urban-forests-make-vibrant-cities) was a very successful initiative towards creating partnership around urban forest issues, Great Britain’ National Urban Forestry Unit (NUFU), an independent organization, thas provided assistance to many local and regional urban forestry initiatives Several guidelines on urban forestry and agroforestry at global, regional and national levels were recently produced to support decision-makers and practitioners (FAO 2013; de Forest et al. 2013) in improving urban life and environmental conditions through urban forestry strategies. In the last decade, indicators and approaches have been designed +o assess the contribution of urban foresxy in terms of ecosystem services (Nowak et al. 2007, 2008). Natural England, an advisory body to the British government that provides practical scientific advice fon how to preserve England’ landscapes, hae developed Gree Injratnuture Guid- «ance (atip:// publications navaralengland org uk/publication/35033). ICLET developed a technical guide for practitioners and decision-makers, Talking ‘Tees, an Urban Forestry Toolkit for Local Govemments (CLE 2006), sized at sp- porting local environmental governance of resilient cities and strengthening inte grated technical, institutional and community capacities Assessment of urban forest resources In onder to promote and develop urban forests iti esential to know their sas and understand the challenges they face as well as their potential contribution in term of ecosystem services. The characterization of the urban forest and the assessment of their condition are challenging tasks (Pauleit et al, 2005; Konijnendjk and Gauthier 2006), Urban forestry and agroforestry 289 Singh et al. (2010) provided a synthetic overview on the global extent of urban forests in the world, According to their analysis, cities in developed countries, in general, have more trees compared to cities in developing countries, which olten fall below 9 m? of green open space per city dweller, Large-tcale international and ational inventories and monitoring of urban foress are sill scarce or fragmentary (Corona et al. 2011). However, there are a umber of cases where National Forest Inventories (NEL) also include uzban forests (Table 11.1), TABLE 11.1 Urban forest in National Foret Inventories Dita sleted/methods applied Soune ‘USA: Urban tee canopy and impervious surfice cower Nowak and Greenfield 2010, snaps for 48 States by US Forest Service (2007) from 2001 Landsat satelite imagery to assess urban forest data including carbon storage and sequestration rates and air pollation removal estimate: Europe: An outlook study on the status of urban forests in EU COST action FP1204 26 countries in Europe Greenintbe France: Dats on the extent and characteristics ofthe forest National Foret Inventory of inand around towne since 2006 France England-a survey of urban tees and their condition and Bite and Johnston 2008. management Germany (Bevin): combining siborne L:DAR and Schreyer etal 2014 ‘QuickBird derived dats to assets carbon stored in urban tuees and to identify differences benween urban stesctire ‘ype ‘Morocco: Basic inventory of 154 intra and peri-urban — HCEPLD 2010 forests (2006): location, aea and satus (Chins: application of airborne LIDAR data and 2 hhypenpectal imagery to generate species-level maps of urban forests with high spatial heterogeneity ng and Qi 2012 (Chins:Information on the average green cover of 499 Wang 2009 ‘Turkey: General Dizectorate of Forestey (OGM) collected Atay etal, 2012 information on the atte of 112 ban forests: phyrical aspects of the forests, management issues, functions and ‘ecosystem services Tria: No national inventory but case studies on Nagendra and Gopal 2010, ‘Chadingarh and Delhi using satelite imageries FST 2009 cespectvely ‘West and Central Asa: Basie information on urban forts Akerlund (2006) [Mapping the extents of urban tree canopy using aerial or MacFaden et al. 2012; satelite smagery MeGee et a 2012 Ute of asborne LiDar for measuring and mapping urban MacFaden eta. 2012, fovest andl tees MoGe al 2012; He otal 2015; Alonzo etal. 2014 290 Fabio Sabitano etal ‘Urban forest inventories are numerous, The care studies on Bogota (Tovar Corzo 2013) and Montpellier (Besse et al. 2014) are excellent examples of two different approaches on the assessinent of urban forests and green areas in cities. ‘The issue of “tves outside forest” (TOF) is azo an important challenge for ‘urban forest asestmnent. The ToF atvessment by de Foresta et al. (2013) includes a specific chapter on the sound assessment of trees in cities 1a emerging aspect in implementing inventories of urban forests and trees is related to communication and involvement of the public, In the last few years, the use of information technologies was decisive in the implementation of comunvnity-bated surveys and interactive inventory tools (Abd-Elzahman et al 2010). Green infrastructure and ecosystem services for future sustainable

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