Urban encroachment and the blurring of urban/rural lines have contributed to the decline in ecosystems and their resources in peri-urban areas. This is occurring globally, driven by the capitalisation and commercialisation of food production or the belief that rapid urbanisation is the solution to endemic rural poverty. Social innovation, championed by change makers who contribute to sustaining long term engagement and responsible management of rural areas, are needed to provide sustainable futures. The local embeddedness of these actions, however, often make scaling such initiatives challenging, limiting their reach and impact.
This study examines the extent that different university-NGO partnerships can engage in collective action to scale and sustain environmental and social change at the peri-urban interface. We argue that universities can form different stakeholder partnerships to equip NGOs and community actors with resources, networks and structures to co-create rural revitalisation initiatives.
In this study, we compare two novel NGO/university collaborative partnerships for rural revitalisation initiatives. These are juxtaposed with a more conventional university-NGO collaboration for community-based action. The first novel case features an incubation-based approach, whereby the university acts as a social innovation incubator to co-create revitalisation programmes with a small NGO while growing the sustainability impact and capacity of the NGO. In the next case, the university works with other universities to form a regional knowledge and incubation platform. Together, they directly incubate the formation of innovative social enterprises and cross-sector collaborations to generate, replicate and translate social innovations to address rural issues.
By comparing the outcomes of these three programmes, through questionnaire data, interviews and observation records, we demonstrate the different ways that universities can partner and collaborate with the third sector in the sustained engagement, co-creation and dissemination of social innovations to address rural issues.
Since the 1970s, the relationship between people and land in Hong Kong’s rural areas has changed significantly, with many areas subject to abandonment, causing a loss in ecosystem services (ES) and communities. Strategies for sustainable land management require understanding of social, economic and ecological processes, and their mutual interdependencies (Kroll et al. 2012). Understanding these is pertinent given growing populations and land competition to avoid social conflicts and ecological destruction.
Participatory ES assessment can complement biophysical assessments by incorporating community needs (Kim et al. 2021). Participatory assessment methods enable ES to be identified based on the benefits they bring to communities and their management preferences to be identified (Kovacs et al. 2015, Brown & Fagerholm 2015). This can help manage conflicts that arise from changes in land use/management that generate trade-offs among ES (Kovacs et al. 2015), or those that emerge from differing perceptions of ES values, which can result in divergent development or conservation efforts (Brown & Fagerholm 2015). This is pertinent in rural areas as this approach highlights the cultural facet of ES, which are often under explored (Kim et al. 2021).
Here, we develop a framework for place-based participatory ES assessments, which will contribute to the formulation of management plans that more comprehensively account for communities’ preferences and, when combined with biophysical assessments, furnish a more inclusive understanding of an area. This will aid ecologically and socially sensitive development, reducing potential conflicts and the loss of valuable ecosystem benefits. The interactions between different stakeholders when utilising place-based participatory ES assessments will be examined to aid understandings on steering, collaboration and advocacy for policy and institution building when managing urban and rural needs of common resources.
Kim, I., Lee, J.H. & Kwon, H., 2021. Participatory ecosystem service assessment to enhance environmental decision-making in a border city of South Korea. Ecosystem Services, 51
Kroll, F., Müller, F., Haase, D. & Fohrer, N., 2012. Rural–urban gradient analysis of ecosystem services supply and demand dynamics. Land use policy, 29(3)
Kovács, E., Kelemen, E., Kalóczkai, Á…, 2015. Understanding the links between ecosystem service trade-offs and conflicts in protected areas. Ecosystem Services, 12
Brown, G. & Fagerholm, N., 2015. Empirical PPGIS/PGIS mapping of ecosystem services: A review and evaluation. Ecosystem services,
