COS 125-5
Building resiliency of urban and near-urban ecosystems through transportation planning: A hope or a hype?

Thursday, August 14, 2014: 2:50 PM
Bondi, Sheraton Hotel
Namrata Shrestha, Research and Development, Ecology, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, Toronto, ON, Canada
Background/Question/Methods

Transportation networks are fundamental to modern society as they connect people and places together, enabling various social and economic activities that improve human wellbeing. Just as they empower socio-economic systems; they often do so at the expense of natural systems that provide numerous ecosystem functions and services. This is especially true in urban landscapes where the natural cover is already under multiple stresses, yet in many cases functioning as the only remaining habitat and wildlife corridors. With the increasing popularity of road ecology, both in theory and practice, increasing numbers of transportation agencies, as well as other regulatory and policy organizations have been amenable to adopting the principles into policy and practice to achieve biodiversity and ecosystem enahncement goals. However, given the understanding of the species and population level ecology as well as the realities of the ever increasing local and cumulative impacts of changing land cover and land use the question of how effective these policies and practice are is often unexplored.

Results/Conclusions

Using multiple policy and practice case studies from Greater Toronto Area and inputs from stakeholder consultation workshops, we argue that ample opportunities exist at multiple scales of planning and decision making for road ecology to make notable contribution to the urban ecosystems. Nevertheless the challenges to operationalize principles, policies, and theory into on the ground practice that can achieve the ultimate goal of enhancing ecosystem resiliency is still largely dependent on social processes and value system that may have nothing to do with ecological science, especially in urban and near-urban areas. Finally we discuss the ways forward in overcoming some of these challenges and provide a conceptual framework to advance translation of science into everyday practice.